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Read on for: Mortgage Seasonality, Mortgage Product Seasonality, Top Keywords By Clicks vs. CPC, Hitwise - Share of all Portfolio Clicks

Mortgages

MARKET NEWS & TRENDS

It’s that time of year again, summer is almost over, days are getting shorter and consumers are starting to hibernate back to their homes to frantically search online to sort out their financial stability post-summer and plan for the future. That’s why, at this time of year, we see spikes in financial searches. This month, we want to look at mortgages as traditionally August through October is peak season for home buying.

Here are some of the highlights:

• Remortgages are likely to be a significant growth area for lenders this year, as speculation mounts over a rise in interest rates. Indeed, Barclays and Nationwide have already launched Switch & Fix propositions to capitalise on consumer anxiety here. (Mintel)

• The number of loans for house purchases and remortgages both increased in May, reflecting a mortgage market that appears to be stabilising. Figures from the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) have revealed that there were 41,500 loans worth £5.9 billion advanced for house purchases in May - up from 40,800 (£5.9 billion in value) in April. (CML)

• Potential first-time buyers are seeking out advice in droves as lenders begin to return to higher loan-to-value lending. First-time buyers looking for guidance in the market accounted for 40% of all advice sought on mortgage matters in June, the highest level seen since April last year. (unbiased.co.uk)

• At present, there are 2,688 residential mortgage products for buyers to choose from – the most since December 2008. Buyers with a 10% deposit have seen their options increase considerably; there are currently 261 products at 90% loan-to-value, up from 176 at the same point last year. The tier with the highest number of mortgage products at present is 75% loan-to-value, which is comprised of just over 800 residential home loan deals. (Moneyfacts)

Vertical Insights - August 2011

ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT BEST PRACTICE

As we can see from the above news snippets, there are certain mortgage areas that are particularly strong at the moment. In particular, remortgages and first time buyer mortgages. It’s crucial to make sure you have these campaigns built out and optimised. With 2688 residential mortgages for buyers to choose from, it’s extremely important to relate your offer in the adcopy in order to set your product apart from others. For example, if you are offering no deposit or 5% deposit mortgages, make sure this is displayed in your copy boldly using Yahoo!’s dynamic keyword insertion. Another thing to bear in mind is to have relevant negative keywords in your account. If you have separate accounts for loans for instance, make sure you have loan terms as negatives along with other finance products you may offer.... In order to have your accounts ready for this peak season, contact the Yahoo! creative team to help optimise your accounts. Below is summary of the work we can help you with;

• Account Investigation

• High Volume Restructure

• De-Dupe

• Bid Proposals

• Match Type suggestions

• Keyword Expands

• Excluded Keywords

• New Ad Suggestions

• Dynamic Keyword Insertion

TOP KEYWORDS

1. mortgage rate

2. mortgage

3. mortgage calculator

4. remortgage deal

5. buy to let mortgage

6. remortgage

7. compare mortgage

8. mortgage advice

9. mortgage deal

10. fixed mortgage

11. fixed mortgage rate

12. mortgage uk

13. best mortgage deal

14. first time buyer mortgage

15. mortgage broker

16. best mortgage

17. 100 mortgage

18. mortgage protection

19. mortgage quote

20. mortgage loan

Vertical Insights - August 2011Page 2 of 2

Mortgages

Drive your business through a combination only Yahoo! offers: the science to target an audience, the art to create engagement, and the scale to reach the right audience in meaningful numbers.

ADVERTISING SOLUTIONS www.advertising.yahoo.co.ukuk.searcham@yahoo-inc.com

MORTGAGE PRODUCT SEASONALITY

As expected “fixed rate mortgages” are most popular at the moment with searches at their highest in two years. “Buy to let mortgages” are pretty flat with spikes in January and May. “Tracker” and “offset” are traditionally steady all year around.

TOP KEYWORDS BY CLICKS VS. CPC

These figures are based on June’s data and it’s very interesting to note that not only does “mortgage rate” have the highest amount of impressions, but also one of the lowest average CPCs at only 85p. Impressions on “mortgage rate” have tripled Y-O-Y, proving that at the moment, there are so many products in the market and buyers are desperately comparing rates. Financial comparison sites should really take advantage of being able to compare rates and bid aggressively on this keyword.

HITWISE - SHARE OF ALL PORTFOLIO CLICKS

This table is very interesting as the number-one term by a long shot in terms of clicks is “mortgage calculator”. Of course this Hitwise data is heavily influenced by Google, but from this, looking at the top 20 keywords on Yahoo! on the previous page, we can see there is a big opportunity here to bid on “mortgage calculator” aggressively on Yahoo! Search. In fact, in the top 15 most-clicked terms across all engines, there are four terms that contain “calculator” in them.

SEARCH TERMS SHARE OF ALL PORTFOLIO CLICKS7/9/11 4/2/11

1 mortgage calculator 20.29% 19.14%

2 mortgage rates 3.62% 4.47%

3 mortgages 3.62% 3.80%

4 mortgage 3.08% 2.72%

5 mortgage repayment calculator

2.21% 1.99%

6 nationwide mortgages

2.01% 2.20%

7 halifax mortgages 1.85% 1.81%

8 buy to let mortgages 1.66% 1.93%

9 bbc mortgage calculator

1.36% 1.34%

10 buy to let mortgage 1.27% 0.83%

11 best mortgage deals 1.00% 1.39%

12 mortgage deals 0.95% 0.84%

13 hsbc mortgages 0.86% 0.68%

14 natwest mortgages 0.82% 0.73%

15 buy to let mortgage calculator

0.81% 0.59%

MORTGAGE SEASONALITY

Impressions on Yahoo! saw a surge last September which tailed off in December. January, however, was very strong, so it is important to ensure that accounts not only have the relevant keywords to take advantage of this seasonality, but also that the top keywords are bid on competitively to help them have a presence in top ad positions. You can also see that Y-O-Y searches are up this year.