Market Rates Insight, a San Rafael, CA, market research firm, launched a Web-based service called Ad-Link yesterday that lets banks track their competitors' product configurations that appear in print ads. Users of the MRI service can view the actual scanned print ads online from financial institutions in more than 200 media markets in the United States.
“With Ad-Link, bank executives can track all of the offerings in a competitor's advertisement,” said Rick Barham, president/CEO of MRI. “Gone are the days when bank marketers could only rely on clippings of competitors' ads that are mailed several weeks after they appear in a local paper.”
With Ad-Link, users choose to see ads the same day they appear in the newspaper, five days later or 10 to 21 days later. All financial services advertising can be scanned, including brokerages. Products such as free checking accounts, CDs and overdraft installment loans also can be tracked.
Barham noted that users of the Ad-Link service also can track how often a competitor's ad is running and how large of an ad purchase they are making.
Yearly subscriptions cost $5,400 to $8,900, depending on the frequency and number of publications tracked.
