On the heels of Bankrate.com’s $15 mm acquisition of Bankaholic.com, essentially a one man blog, other entrants drop into the space.
Paul Knag points to new bank rate comparison sites, like BankAround.com and MyBankTracker.com. Paul highlights that they are user experience remakes of the classic Bankrate.com rate tables paradigm.
Is there room and utility for more than one of these rate table models in the online lead generation market?
My guess is that each of these is banking on (pun intended, of course) the fact that market volatility leads to rate volatility, which Bankrate.com continually attributes to their successful weathering of the online lead generation storm.
Atul Patel, co-founder of BankAround.com seems to have a more focused strategy–bet on America’s panicked rush to change behavior from credit and spend, to save and penny-pinch. I think it is a good focus, but can they gather the traffic to be significant?
This is what Bankrate.com thinks constituents $15 mm of relative significance:
