The Realtor.com, Trulia, Zillow Ad Network Race
When it comes to real estate ad networks — Zillow has Yahoo! Real Estate & hundreds of newspapers. Trulia has CNNMoney. Realtor.com has MSN. Realtor.com just announced their deal with BlockShopper.com yesterday.
I think, over the next 12-24 months, we will see a race between Zillow, Trulia, and Move (Realtor.com) to sign up the next wave of niche real estate sites and media outlets to their respective ad networks. Building an inside sales team to sell ads is an extremely expensive undertaking, but required to reach agents all over the country. Most niche sites that have traffic likely don’t have enough traffic & ad impressions to warrant hiring their own sales team. And let’s be honest — most of those companies would rather spend their time and effort building more cool features and growing their traffic than managing a sales team. But of course they also need to make money – so having another party handle their ad inventory makes sense.
Any guesses as to which niche real estate site is next in line to sign on the dotted line?
For the real estate professionals reading, how important is it for you to advertise on the “largest” real estate network? What do your clients say when you SHOW them (hat tip to Chris Smith) you are spending money marketing their listings on the #1 real estate network?
Mike
Posted at 19:42h, 11 MarchThanks for the post. I think that this is all relative and depends on the mission of your marketing plan. Some real estate ad companies such as Zillow and Trulia are a great platform for promoting on a much larger scale than smaller companies with a more focused attention on a local scene.
Great post!
Jason
drewmeyers
Posted at 04:33h, 13 MarchAgreed. I guess what I’m getting at is that most local companies providing realtors advertising won’t really find it worth their while given the time and money it takes to reach agents and the limited ad inventory they are likely to have.
Victor Lund
Posted at 23:46h, 12 MarchI think that the next horizon is going to be led by LPS. They have an emerging product in REALM – Real Estate and Living Media Network. It is one of the Cyberhome assets that was not sold to NAR or Listingbook. They are managing advertising on sites like SoCALMLS.com and others.
I imagine that emerging advertising on Franchise, Broker, and ultimately – agent websites will create more opportunities for advertisers and lower CPM rates for big sites.
Should be interesting.
drewmeyers
Posted at 04:40h, 13 MarchRegarding sites like socalmls — aren’t they supposed to be serving the interests on their agents? I guess I’m struggling to see why they have banner advertising in the 1st place. Wouldn’t it just be better to charge the agents a tiny bit more and optimize their website 100% to sending leads to agents that are members of the socalmls?
https://skitch.com/drewmeyers/rwppg/arcadia-ca-real-estate-listings-southern-california-mls-homes-for-sale
I bet this converts at a really low percentage. As a consumer, I would never fill out a form like that without knowing where that contact information goes. If it was directed at an specific agent I found, sure, but a generic box that could be sent to any agent (or to some automated system)? That doesn’t do it for me. But maybe that’s just me.
drewmeyers
Posted at 04:42h, 13 MarchOr use whatever SEO juice they can muster to send to individual agent websites rather than trying to rank for terms like “arcadia ca real estate listings” themselves? Why is an MLS even spending any time/money building a website? It’s not their core business, and never will be.
Victor Lund
Posted at 18:29h, 13 MarchPerhaps you misunderstand. SoCal MLS does not charge the agents or brokers anything (unlike third party websites). It is a member benefit and they deliver thousands of leads to their agents every month – free.
The entire site is ad sponsored by companies like Bank of America, AT & T and other premium brands who participate in LPS REALM to reach real estate consumers..
In SoCal, profits from advertising exceed the cost of the website. The site gets over 1 Million page views a month according to Hitwise – and I imagine the CPM is somewhere between $3 and $6 given the audience and geographical relevance. – that is revenue of between $9k and $12k per month.
The revenue goes to offset dues or extend additional member services. I do not not know the details of how much they make or how they deliver the revenue – but it is a pretty good model on the surface.
drewmeyers
Posted at 19:27h, 13 MarchSo it’s a membership benefit for members of the MLS – so the cost is just built into agent dues. Building a consumer website is still not socalmls’ core business, nor will it ever be. I happen to disagree with the approach, but I’m not arguing that it can be viable revenue stream for a MLS. I’m just guessing there are better things they could do with their resources than building a consumer website. Why not just send all the traffic to agent/broker websites? That would seem to be better approach in my opinion. But I guess if the site generates tons of leads while still having advertising, then great. Without advertising, they could probably increase the leads generated though.
Just my 2 cents.
dowelltaggart
Posted at 04:13h, 18 MarchIt seems like each client has their preferences. It really depends what they use to search for homes for sale. 3 years ago it was no doubt, realtor,com. Now I’m hearing Trulia and Zillow with realtor.com.
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Barrie Real Estate
Posted at 16:01h, 20 AprilAll I know is that Trulia and Zillow are the best niche platform and which is good for promoting sites. I’m going to look forward after months to check the rankings of the most niche real estate ad networks. Thanks you.