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Bill Rice is the CEO of Kaleidico, a leader in lead management systems. Prior to founding Kaleidico he was the VP of National Home Equity and the Home Loan Benefit program at Quicken Loans and one of the founding executives of DeepGreen Bank, an Internet-only bank that was one of the first and (at that time) largest buyers of LendingTree leads in early 2000.

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Is NexTag Benefiting from Competitor Mortgage Woes?

February 20th, 2008 • Related • Filed Under
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News is breaking that Mortgage Companies Reduce Online Ad Spending and Mortgage Ad Budgets are Being Cut on the heels of Nielsen Online’s latest online advertising spending survey.

However, I think there may be a more interesting and subtle mortgage lead market story evolving here. As major mortgage online advertising spenders, like Countrywide Financial, Experian Group (LowerMyBills), IAC (LendingTree) pull back their budgets; most probably based on publicly reported financial weaknesses could financially stronger players be grabbing premium market opportunity?

Most notably in these reports is the counter-trend movement of NexTag. NexTag is one of the premiere online comparison shopping sites and now the top online mortgage advertising buyer.

The question and mortgage lender opportunity becomes: Could Nextag be using it’s position of financial strength to scoop up premium mortgage advertising space and surge not only their market share, but also quality share in the online mortgage lead generation space?

  • You've got to believe that all of the companies mentioned have carefully slashed their ad budgets while, most probably, paying close attention to key quality indicators as well as overall price points. Buying up more marketing positions that other firms have perhaps meticulously discarded doesn't always equate to higher quality scores. In fact, it may have the opposite effect.

    David
    .....
    David Schneider
    Founder/CEO
    http://www.ZipSearch.com
  • I generally agree with what you are saying, but as the competition (demand) for this once premium ad positioning will more financially sound lead generators have opportunities to arbitrage that space at better ROIs.

    My premise is that some media buyers are having to cut far below the "marginal" line and into the high quality buys too.

    David, you can't tell me you are not picking up some high quality/value bargains that others had to let go or publishers are having trouble filling with disappearing lenders and lead generation companies.

    You become a bigger and more respected brand each day on the backs of your struggling competitors :)

    But, your secret is safe here you coy marketer!
  • Young Bill... Sorry to disappoint you but I'm not that coy. All positions we've picked up from suffering competitors over the years, and there have been a number of them, haven't worked out and all of them are a testament why those companies had gotten into quality/financial troubles in the first place. Either all of those marketing placements were bad or we were too dumb to make them work.

    David
    …..
    David Schneider
    Founder/CEO
    http://www.ZipSearch.com
  • I am going to err on the side that some lead providers in happier times were sitting on bloated poor performing sludge.

    Good insight to the potential real story as this market tilts and turns.

    It your willingness to go inside the secret domains of your business that should intrigue people into listening to your podcast at http://zipsearch.com. Keep it up I love when it shows up in my iTunes!
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