“A company that helps you find the perfect credit card is now worth $1 billion,” said a recent headline in Business Insider:
Credit Karma, a credit-tracking personal finance site, raised $75 million on Monday in a new round of funding that values the company at more than $1 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The new funding, coming just six months after its $85 million Series C, was led by Google Capital, Tiger Global Management, and Susquehanna Growth Equity. The 7-year-old company now has raised over $193 million.
Credit Karma is one of the big players in credit card affiliate marketing. Another big one is a company called Bankrate.com. BankRate owns CreditCards.com, a credit card marketing site disguised as a credit card advice site.
What else does BankRate own? In the words of its SEC filing:
Our unique content and rate information is distributed through three main sources: our owned and operated websites, online co-brands, and print partners. We own a network of content-rich, proprietary websites focused on specific vertical categories, including mortgages, deposits, insurance, credit cards and other personal finance categories.
If you scroll down a bit further you see this:
Since 2010, we have executed several acquisitions, including two important acquisitions of NetQuote Holdings, Inc. (“NetQuote”) and CreditCards.com, Inc. (“CreditCards”) enabling us to strengthen our offering to both advertisers seeking high quality leads and consumers who are looking for a comprehensive suite of financial products. These acquisitions have strengthened our position through increased selection of products and increased scale of our audience resulting in greater appeal to personal financial services partners and greater spending per partner.
So they own a “network of content-rich, proprietary websites”, yet they only list one acquisition, CreditCards.com. That means there are other sites they own that are not listed here.
Who else do you suppose they own? We can only wonder since they own sites that are too small to require public disclosure ((publicly traded companies don’t need to disclose acquisitions unless said acquisitions are sufficiently large.). It wouldn’t surprise me if it turns out they actually own bloggers, bloggers believed by the public to be independent. We know they don’t own Frugal Travel Guy–that’s owned by Internet Brands. We know they don’t own BoardingArea.com–that’s owned by that guy Randy.
Beyond that, it’s anybody’s guess.
Imagine you read the newspaper (remember those?) every morning for years. Imagine the newspaper frequently prints great reviews of Chevrolets and points out how a Chevrolet could really help you and your family.
Now imagine you find out that the newspaper is owned by the local Chevy dealership, but they concealed this fact from you. Does that strike you as ethical?
Imagine reading your favorite blogger every day only to find out that they (or rather, their website) is owned by BankRate.com or CreditCards.com–how would you feel then?
Those of you reading this might want to check with your favorite bloggers. Ask them–very politely, of course, this isn’t a witch hunt–is your website owned by you, or by somebody else?
Fun fact TPG is actually owned by BankRate. Sold a stake to them.
Very informative, thank you for taking your time to report this information. Keep on churning!
Cheers,
PedroNY
From a selfish standpoint I am seeing this as a positive trend. The transformation of the travel blog space into one where content is bought and controlled leads to far less deal killing. 🙂
Awesome post as usual. And wow, @anextremelyreliablesource, is TPG really owned by Bankrate? I always knew he was figuratively “owned” by his affiliate links but never realized that he is literally owned by them…
BankRate also owns CardSynergy, which used to be the independent credit card sub-affiliate network NCS Reporting, and they also acquired FlexOffers (CardOffers), which was also a previously independent sub-affiliate network and formerly one of the biggest competitors with NCS Reporting for credit card affiliate marketing, and through these networks, they control most of the credit card affiliate links that most bloggers use. They pretty much have a monopoly on credit card affiliate marketing, especially for bloggers.
I really don’t get this post. Ownership hardly matters. All ad-support sites, no matter how big or small, are really much more beholden to their advertisers.
And you could argue that the big sites have stricter standards for accuracy and objectivity, since they get more scrutiny from advertisers, investors and regulators.
Readers might care about advertiser relationships (that’s why all the sites have FTC recommended disclosures, just like this site), but they don’t care about who owns a site. Only other bloggers care about that. Catty bunch, those.
WillieL, I’ll lay odds that you’re one of those ‘bloggers who we shouldn’t ask too many questions about’!
Lately the word is that ThePointsGuy has been owned by BankRate.com for awhile without any disclosure. Doesn’t that seem germane to anyone using his/its advice and links?!
It’s a rhetorical question.
lets just say that TPG hasn’t been an amateur frugal traveler for quite a while now.
I ran across your post and wanted to correct something you said. It is possible for something to be two things at once. CreditCards.com is not “disguised as a credit card advice site.” It actually is one, as well as being a card comparison website. We employ full time reporters and editors with a substantial amount of journalism experience, and write news stories and features and create tools for readers to use in deciding how to use debt wisely, and, yes, acquire a card right for them. The editorial staff is independent of the card marketing staff, with the same sort of wall dividing us as exists between editorial staffs and business sides of traditional news organizations.
I would invite you to look at the news archives, and at the depth and breadth of coverage, and see if you still think the thousands of objective, informative stories we have published over the years constitute a disguise, or a genuine effort to inform and educate readers.
And I can’t help but add: Since the point of your blog was to complain about anonymous ownership of personal finance blogs, what was your name again?
Dan Ray
editor in chief
CreditCards.com
Wow, looks like you hit a nerve with creditcards.com.
An old thread but I could not help but laugh at the Editor in Chief of that Website (assuming that is an accurate title – since he doesn’t show up anywhere on the “Leadership” listed on the site) – claiming to have editorial standards that seem up to the WSJ/NYTIMES standards of journalistic excellence. One thing to blatantly peddle your wares (this is America after all – we are entitled to get rich or try anyway), another for these folks to annoint themselves as “journalists”. A good start would be for them to provide links to all the articles they have written that directly identify and criticize credit card products offered by their key sponsors.
So unkind of you to have said all this stuff – you must have really hurt their feelings here.
As Max stated previously.. BankRate owns CardSynergy, which used to be an independent credit card sub-affiliate network known as NCS Reporting. Over time BankRate bought out other competing credit card affiliate networks as well.. such as FlexOffers which was another of the independent sub-affiliate network and formerly one of their biggest competitors in credit card affiliate marketing.
This gave them complete control of the credit card affiliate market.. a veritable monopoly in credit card affiliate marketing.
Their next step was to start requiring higher and higher revenues for their affiliates. Every few months more and more affiliates were put out of business.. as commission requirements kept ever increasing.
At the same time they also began purchasing high volume sites from larger affiliates so as to eliminate their competition. Most of the large credit card comparison sites are now owned by BankRate.. giving them a monopoly not only in the credit card affiliate space.. but in the marketing of credit cards online.
These tactics are in complete violation of US anti-trust laws!