Here’s our idea, please feel free to run with it!
Related to the Stop Junk Mail post, sometimes store ads are useful, because they tell us about special offers, give us coupons, and can sometime really save us money. But that doesn’t mean that I want my mailbox full of ads every week. Nor does it mean that I want to see those ads on paper. But I would like a way to review weekly specials at my local stores – electronically.
Currently many stores offer a way to view their weekly circular online. Best Buy is getting good, (click on Weekly Ad in the upper-left corner), as I"m sure are other stores. But you have to go into each site and input your zip code. Then you have to take time to scroll through something that looks like it was made for paper and then just plopped up on the internet without thinking about different formatting.
Local e-Ads would be a web service that individuals could subscribe to. The service would put together all of the weekly ads that apply to that zip code – all in one place, in an easy to access manner. Free to the consumer, the companies pay for the service (hopefully!). It can be customizable to see only ads that the consumer wants to see.