Financial comparison service MoneySupermarket is facing the
collapse of a major partnership deal because of Trinity Mirror's plans
to ditch its lifestyle portal icChoice.
MoneySupermarket was meant to power the money features on icChoice,
which was due to launch in mid-April. But Trinity Mirror has since
decided to pull its lifestyle portal and close its icShowbiz and icSport
sites.
The deal would have seen MoneySupermarket providing comparisons for
products such as mortgages and loans, as well as generating editorial
content for icChoice. Articles in The Mirror were planned to drive
traffic to the aggregator portal.
The deal now appears to be dead, although at the time of going to press,
the company was still waiting for official confirmation from Trinity
Mirror.
'It seems to me that this is a knee-jerk reaction. If it could have
integrated the offline newspapers with the online offerings to promote
each other, surely it had to be a winning formula,' said Simon Nixon,
chief executive of MoneySupermarket.
MoneySupermarket has also linked up with ISP Freeserve to power the
first interactive tools on its savings channel, which will enable users
to compare interest rates. Recent deals have also included placements on
search engines Lycos and AltaVista, as well as agreements with newspaper
publisher Newsquest and TV show GMTV.
_1.jpg)
.jpg)
