Bronte Media

Joel has a good interview with Dave Wengel of TargusInfo around Mortgage lead scrub rates. Specifically that lendingtree and lowermybills have a 15% scrub rate whereas the free ipod guys (lure people in with promise of a free ipod but they and their friends have to signup for credit cards, netflix and talk to mortgage brokers to get it) have around a 50-60% scrub rate.

If you are following Alley Insider’s meme of mortgage being the canary in the ‘next slowdown’ of online advertising, this to me would say Valueclick rather than Experian or Bankrate.

Also, here’s a well-thought out contrarian position on the impact of the credit crunch on mortgage online advertising.

I am on the fence on this one at the moment. In the end, if consumers are buying less homes and it’s harder to get a mortgage then that’s bad news. And if exotic mortgage products that generate huge fees, a percentage of which flows down to lead generators, have dried up, then that is equally bad news.