The drumbeat heralding the demise, or at least leveling off, of the daily deal market has been picking up in recent days. Most recently, news broke that Groupon was delaying its IPO.

Other worrisome recent events for the industry: Facebook has pulled its Daily Deal offering; Yelp is scaling back its sales force for these products. Experian Hitwise reported a significant drop-off in Groupon traffic this summer; according to PriceGrabber’s Local Deals Survey, 52% of respondents expressed feeling overwhelmed by the number of daily deal emails they receive.

Google Still Likes the Market

The market is hardly ready to give up yet.

Rather, proponents say, these events are signs the market is maturing and perhaps consolidating. Google continues to roll out its deal product in various cities. Now it is open for business in Washington, DC, Austin, Boston, Denver and Seattle. More to the point, it recently acquired Zave Networks, a digital coupon company that focuses on supermarket loyalty cards. It also has analytics capabilities to help retailers measure the success of a particular campaign.

Tighter integration with loyalty cards is one of the strategies with which providers are experimenting - at least those that want to differentiate themselves from the hundreds of other providers in the market.