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ONLINE BROKERAGES SPONSOR GOMEZ CONTENT.
03/15/99
Financial Net News
Copyright 1999 Information Access Company. All rights reserved.
E*Trade Securities and Mr. Stock are sponsoring editorial content on the
Gomez Advisors Web site. E*Trade is sponsoring Gomez's IPO and
Options Jump Start sections, which provide articles written by Gomez
staff, tools and links to Web sites about IPOs and options. Mr. Stock's
sponsorship involves Gomez's Broker Selection 101 page, which
provides Web surfers with suggestions on how to choose an online
brokerage. Both firms are seeking to tap the sophisticated visitors to the
Gomez site (www. gomez . com ). Gomez is known for its high-profile
quarterly rankings of both online brokerages and banks, which are posted
on its site.
E*Trade and Mr. Stock are ranked third and 12th, respectively, in
Gomez's latest Internet brokerage rankings, which judge online firms on
ease of use, customer confidence, on-site resources, overall costs and
relationship services. Gomez analyst Alan Alper said the marketing
relationships do not jeopardize the objectivity of the rankings. "Clearly it
is a great way to bring in revenue--when companies want to buy
sponsorships we make it clear that they will be given a nice position on
the page but they will not influence what we write and how we evaluate
business," he said. The firms only have a say over the marketing message,
Alper added.
E*Trade has a button on the Gomez home page touting its sponsorships
as well as banner ads on both sections promoting Power E*Trade, its
new suite of services that includes free real-time quotes and streaming
charts. E*Trade is sponsoring the sections as a way to attract the fairly
sophisticated investors who tend to gravitate to the Gomez site and have
a pre-existing interest in Internet trading, according to a firm
spokeswoman. E*Trade also decided to advertise on Gomez's IPO and
options sections to complement the IPO center on its own site.
Mr. Stock also touts its sponsorship with a button on the Gomez home
page, and a banner ad on the broker page invites visitors to open an
account with Mr. Stock (www.mrstock.com). The firm made the move
to align itself with a Web site that agrees with its own philosophy of
educating investors as much as possible, according to Brent Houston,
managing director.
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