Online coupons are often a mess to manage for manufacturers, who deal with a confusing universe of third-party providers. The partnerships are often expensive and leave little to no room for customization. They’re not exactly easy for consumers to navigate either, as a simple search of the word "coupon" immediately kicks out more than 796 million results. Indeed, one wonders if the manufacturers themselves have any idea as to which site is offering which coupon online.

But a Rogers, Ark.-based company named Rockfish Interactive is trying to stake a claim as a distinguished member of this pack, offering manufacturers a more individualized, better marketed version of what’s out there. It’s allowing these manufacturers to manage their own online coupons, including oversight of customization, offer expiration, coupon verbiage and imagery, and the number of coupons offered during a campaign. Pepperidge Farms, Motts and Smuckers all used this for a big back-to-school campaign via Lunchboxbuilder.com, which allowed parents and children to build their own virtual lunchbox and then pick which coupons they wanted to print, resulting in more than 45,000 coupons used.

“We’ve been using our Web-based couponing system on some large campaigns lately, and we are excited by its ease of use, multiplatform functionality, tracking features and price,” says Kenny Tomlin, CEO and founder of Rockfish, which is a full-service agency that provides user/market research, content management, branding consultation, online design and other interactive services for clients such as Wal-Mart, Nickelodeon, NASCAR and Dr Pepper. “Those were all major concerns our clients had with other third-party options we had previously tested.”

Here’s how it works with respect to the consumer experience: Users enter name, e-mail and ZIP code. Based on previous usage of the system, they’re shown coupons they are eligible to receive. Site administrators can set a limit to the number of coupons a user can print for any individual offer—there are multiples to account for printer failure or other technical issues. Users choose the coupon they wish to print, and the coupon image is generated on the fly and printed to the user’s default printer, bypassing the browser print dialog using Java. This way, manufacturers can feel comforted, knowing that nobody can hijack the image of the coupon with a screen grab or jack up the number of copies sent to the printer in the print dialog.

Administrators can set limits for total number of coupon prints available per offer to ensure no more coupons are printed than their bottom line will allow. Administrators can also dissect demographic information during and after offers to track target markets.