Health Insurance Ad Network Brokers Web acquired by Healthcare.com

November 2, 2008

Brokers Web , the health insurance PPC ad network which operates the portal HealthInsuranceFinders.com was recently acquired by Healthcare.com (Oct 2008) . 

Originally founded in 1985 before the beginnings of the web, Brokers Web (as it eventually became) created an online quote engine in 1999 , before launching HealthInsuranceFinders.com in 2001 . While it doesn’t have massive amounts of traffic ,  HealthInsuranceFinders.com ranks at the top of Google for the terms ”medical insurance” and “health insurance” (at number 1 and 2 respectively in Oct 2008) . The company eventually morphed the web site into a PPC ad portal for agents and insurance companies , along with an affiliate network. Brokers Web also provides customers with branded lead generation websites and analytics tools.

The attraction for Healthcare.com appears to be both the content side of HealthInsuranceFinders.com , along with the monetization platform that Brokers Web has built up in the profitable health insurance niche.

Traffic Data :

Healthcare.com  and HealthInsuranceFinders.com on Compete

Sources :

Brokers Web About Us , PaidContent , Press Release on Acquisition , CNet

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Bankaholic bought by Bankrate for 15 million dollars

September 30, 2008

Bankaholic.com , a one man outfit run by 22 year old Johns Wu was recently acquired (Sep 2008) by Bankrate.com , one of the largest online personal finance networks.

Bankaholic is essentially a blog with comparison pages for financial products such as Certificates of Deposit, along with bank reviews, offer pages for products and so on. Some of the content, like CD rate comparisons is in fact already “powered by Bankrate.com” so it would seem a natural fit.

The price was $12.4 million up front with up to an additional $2.5 million earn out over the next year, based on performance.

The site has grown from its launch in July 2006 as a project during Wu’s student days and currently has  traffic of around 300K unique visitors a month, as reported by Compete - under a tenth of Bankrate.com’s traffic . It rates very highly in Google for such competitive and lucrative terms as “cd rates” , “credit card offers” and so on which will likely drive a large number of high value customers via organic search.

Traffic Data :

Bankaholic.com on compete.com

Bankaholic.com on quantcast.com

Sources :

Reuters press release  , paidcontent.org , Noah Kagan , YCombinator discussion , Washington Post article , Bankrate.com (Businessweek profile) , Interview with Johns Wu at WebProNews  and a follow up .

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CreditCardGuide.com cashes out for 44 million dollars

September 29, 2008

Bankrate recently (Sep 2008) acquired the assets of LinkSpectrum , consisting mainly of the website CreditCardGuide.com, for $32 million in cash, plus $2 million for the companys working capital with a further payout of up to $10 milllion earn out over the next two years if performance targets are met.

CreditCardGuide.com is a credit card comparison website founded by Rafael David who at acquisition time was still the only full time employee. Ranking highly in Google for profitable key terms such as  ’credit card’ (top result in Sep 2008 ) and ‘credit cards’ (2nd highest result as of Sep 2008) its easy to see how the website would derive significant revenue from providing comparison information and subsequent lead provision fees for signing consumers up to credit card companies products.

Bankrate also bought Nationwide Card Services in Dec 2007 , and as CreditCardGuide.com was an affiliate of NCS it must have seemed a logical step to add the site to the growing Bankrate portfolio.

Traffic Data :

CreditCardGuide.com on compete.com ( compared with another recent acquisition bankaholic.com)

CreditCardGuide.com on quantcast.com

Sources :

Reuters report , MarketWatch report , Motley Fool article , Paidcontent.org (NCS)

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