Truthfully, Microsoft should pick up PriceGrabber, but MSFT is a bit busy these days with their frenemies at Yahoo.

So why IAC?
-Pronto has a solid base because it powers IAC’s Ask.com. The line in Pronto’s recent press release announcing ‘Pronto’s explosive traffic growth through the second half of 2007 coincides with its entree into the Social Shopping space’ is nice, but the reason for the growth is a mix of becoming Ask’s default shopping engine and aggressive keyword buying on the PPC engines. Pronto has room to grow in both those marketing channels, but adding PriceGrabber would allow it to tackle the third leg of a shopping engine’s traffic acquisition strategy: business development partnerships. PriceGrabber powers the comparison shopping functionality of hundreds of strong content sites. The addition of this partner network in conjunction with PriceGrabber’s established traffic base would quickly vault Pronto to tier 1 shopping engine status as opposed to a steady battle for growth through expensive PPC ads.

So is there any chance that this would happen?
-IAC has the money. IAC has the ecommerce ambitions (HSN, Cornerstone Brands, ShoeBuy, Gifts.com). IAC understands search (Ask). IAC understands the power of comparison shopping/lead gen (LendingTree). And if the company really wants to play in the shopping search space, which I believe it does, buying PriceGrabber would considerably accelerate it’s growth. There are some big cultural issues to overcome, but I think if both teams sat down to look at their strengths, I think they’d realize this is a solid match.

Note: I did not talk to either party about this potential match.

A lot of people missed the emails sent by the shopping engines about seasonal rate increases, so here’s a quick summary:

Become.com - no rate increase
Yahoo! Shopping - no rate increase
Google Product Search - free
TheFind - free
Pronto - not holiday related, but there will be some adjustments, both up and down (Nov. 15)
Smarter.com - 20% rate increase for all categories (Nov. 1 - Dec. 31)
Shopzilla - 25% rate increase for all categories (Nov. 12 - Dec. 31)
PriceGrabber - 25% rate increase for all categories (Nov. 1 - Jan. 15)
NexTag - 25% rate increase for all categories (Nov. 1 - Jan. 2)
Shopping.com - 10-25% rate increase depending on category (Nov. 15 - Dec. 31)

Pronto is powering the Shopping ‘tab’ on two of Ask’s search properties: Excite.com and iWon.com.

It’s not like iWon and Excite get a ton of traffic, but I’m sure this means that Pronto is moving closer to replacing PriceGrabber on Ask’s Shopping section. Haven’t heard anything from either company to back up this statement, but I have a feeling this will happen well before the holiday shopping season.

Background: Why Pronto Will Succeed

PS. Pronto is also powering Lycos’ Shopping section.

“[Comparison shopping] makes so much sense that we didn’t do it. We looked at all of them. They were for sale for anyone who would pay the price. We looked and said they do something good, but it’s boring, we don’t want to do it. I think comparative shopping is very interesting, but I think the valuation was insane. It’s a great thing, it’s just not something that I want to do. I wish them well, but not too well.”

-Barry Diller (Chairman and CEO IAC) on comparison shopping engines, addressing a group of merchants at Shop.org

As I’ve explained before, a number of individuals have told me about IAC’s plans to get into comparison shopping with a project code named Red Carpet. However, because IAC doesn’t comment on rumors, I’ve had no official confirmation of this information.

Looks like Red Carpet is still moving forward. Greg Yardley tipped me off to this job listing for Red Carpet on the beta job site YorZ (if you know anyone who fits the bill, you can receive a $5k bounty for the referral). While the listing does not mention IAC or comparison shopping, it definitely reads like a comparison shopping job.

I’m about to get on a flight to San Jose for SES. Expect a ton of coverage this week.

Anonymous sources in the internet marketing space tell me that IAC/InterActive Corp is hiring tech and biz dev people to join a project called Red Carpet - which apparently will be a new comparison shopping engine. Planned rollout is for Q4 2005. This is just a rumor right now. I contacted IAC for more information 2 days ago, and my contact is still looking into it. I will continue to investigate and tell you more as I hear additional news. If anyone out there can tell me anything about Red Carpet, please contact me (all correspondence will be kept anonymous).