Speaking at a Jupiter Communications Financial Services show in San Francisco, Levin said that "to pay $12 million for a damn button is useless." Instead, financial institutions should look to set up deals that provide interaction with end users. "Being embedded in the functional purpose of the site is more meaningful than being in the portion of the site that people ignore," he said.
Levin was speaking at a panel with representatives of banks and Intuit Corp. (Nasdaq:INTU) CEO William Harris. The group had been discussing the recent deal between Citibank (NYSE:CCI) and Netscape Communications Corp. (Nasdaq:NSCP) of placements in the Netcenter portal, estimated at $45 million.
Deals must be mutually beneficial
Mike DeVico, executive vice president of Bank of America, said that any relationship between financial institutions and portals had to ensure that the deal was mutually beneficial in the long term.
DeVico's mutually-beneficial view was echoed by Dudley Nigg, executive vice president at Wells Fargo.
"I see a lot of money being poured into portals and that's nice for the portals, but I don't see what that does for the financial institution, other than buy them a lot of advertising," Nigg said.
