According to arecentreport in Radio Business Report, McCann Worldgroup’s MRM split with Home Depot, “nine months after scoring digital and CRM duties,” according to an internal MRM e-mail cited by www.RBR.com.

The split was blamed, RBR says, on Home Depot “requesting work beyond the original deal without paying additional compensation, according to an Adweek story.” The news noted that currently Home Depot has The Richards Group Dallas handling creative and Initiative Atlanta handling media.

In the internal e-mail sent to Adweek, as reported by RBR, MRM NYC managing director Corey Mitchell wrote that "for reasons based on a fair exchange of services and a mutual inability to arrive at realistic expectations, we are choosing to walk away from our relationship with The Home Depot completely…It is a shame to have to walk away after so much, but it is not a viable business relationship for us."

Home Depot confirmed the split via a publicly-released statement, saying "after a few months of working together we felt it would be in our best interest to end our work with MRM."

Earlier this week TMC (News - Alert) hadthenews that RSR Research revealed the results of a benchmarking report titled “The Digital Divide: Digital Gifting Among Top Internet Retailers,” placing Home Depot #1.

RSR analyzed the Internet Retailer Top 100, a list of the top 100 online retailers, and rated each on their digital gift card offering, using 20 critical criteria.

The criteria focused on the comprehensiveness of the offering and the selection, purchase and recipient experience. The study focused on digital gift card purchases made in July 2010. CashStar, a digital gifting and incentives company, sponsored the research, according to the company.

Based on the evaluation criteria, the retailers with the highest overall scores and therefore the most comprehensive digital gift card offering are: 1. The Home Depot 2. CVS Caremark 3. Amazon.com (News - Alert) 4. American Eagle Outfitters 5. Sears Holding Corp.