Popular overseas blog Nubricks.com recently announced a new advertising platform dubbed "Launch Newswire" which includes an "unlimited usage" package costing £500/year. Nubricks claims to have over 60,000 unique visitors per month and 12,000 subscribers to its email blast newsletters. They've also recently launched "Property Ladder", a free weekend service where users can showcase overseas property for free, subject to editorial discretion.
Spotted today on Extate.co.uk are adverts for Knight Frank, Savills, Miller Homes and Mortgage Angels. At the bottom of the search results is a link worded "Your Online Guide to Mortgages" which seems to be a mortgage quotation service apparently provided by Mortgage Angels.
Sam Sethi recently explained that Extate had incorporated the Openads advertising platform, which would give Extate the opportunity to provide local solicitors, removal companies and other businesses the opportunity to "advertise to a highly targeted audience."
The only problem with the Extate model is traffic, something Extate currently lacks. Extate founder Artemi Krymski and I discussed this problem a few weeks ago, and he refused to reveal specific numbers, but in a Blognation comment, Krymski claimed that Extate traffic was "now beginning to approach 1M", an ambiguous comment, if there ever was one, after all, the numeral 'one' is a number that approaches one million. Unconfirmed figures put Extate traffic at a steady 50,000 visitors per month, but so far nothing forthcoming officially from them.
If Extate is truly serious about marketing their advertising platform, and if they expect it to take off, they will have to quickly reveal traffic numbers to the general public. However, with the likes of Knight Frank advertising on the service, no doubt there's something good brewing behind the scenes
So much for the cooling market, it certainly ain't cooling online, with Extate's new money and Rightmove's expanding profit margin, certainly the right place to be investing - at least for the moment:
[Reuters]
Rightmove Plc, which runs Britain's busiest property website, reported on Friday 13.2 million pounds ($26.5 million) in underlying operating profit for the six months to end June, as the number of advertisers rose by 26 percent and visits to its property website increased by 58 percent.
"We expect to generate a similar level of year-on-year growth in the second half ... Property agents have to sell houses in a slowing market, and so they are doing promotions ... We do not see any noticeable deterioration in our business," Managing Director Ed Williams told reporters.
He said the length of time properties were staying on the market was rising, however.
Britain's housing market has slowed as five interest rate increases in less than a year to 5.75 percent and expectations of another hike to 6 percent damp buyer interest.
Rightmove earns subscription fees from its customers such as estate agents, rental agents and new home developers in exchange for allowing them to advertise properties, new developments and rental properties.[more]
"We hope to be more than a listing/advertising service. Certainly members can list & advertise any type of property on the site. Those who are involved in real estate need & want more than that, we think. They need & want a place to exchange information, ask questions, learn & help others, & themselves, be better at what they do. They want to go to a place they can trust to be fair with them & give them value. There are any number of advertising & listing sites & if people could afford it, they would use every one to reach as many potential buyers as possible. We believe they can use our website as well to help them. We will use our brand to promote our members, their business and their listings.
We are NOT an advertising based model, we are member subscription based. We prefer to NOT use an advertising model because we think it might make us beholden to advertisers & influence how things are done to meet their demands, wants & needs. (This is not to imply that’s what all advertising based sites are doing) We want to answer only to our members & please them.
Only time will tell if consumers & real estate professionals find the sellsius real estate community valuable."
Joseph Ferrara; Sep 18th, 2006 at 7:06 pm
As news reports circulate about potential strike action at The Telegraph, Robert Young reminds us that it was 20 years ago that Rupert Murdoch instigated the Wapping Dispute which shook up and revolutionized the British newspaper industry. Today, Young feels that Murduch is on the crusp of another media revolution - blogging.
Young seems to think that with Murdoch's successful Myspace coup d'etat, that he's now got his eyes on an even bigger internet phonomenom:
Today, the newspaper industry is again facing many challenges and possible extinction. The fiscal problems plaguing iconic brands like the New York Times and the Tribune Company are well documented. But the problem this time is not offset-lithography… it’s the rise of the blogosphere. Simply put, it’s centralized content production and distribution vs. decentralized people media. I have now learned, first hand, how blogging competes with traditional newsprint reporting and publishing. So where does all this leave us? If I was a betting man, I’m going to bet that Murdoch’s next move is to acquire a blogging platform… either Six Apart9 (which owns Moveable Type, TypePad, LiveJournal, and Vox) or Automattic10 (owner of WordPress). And if he does, it can prove to be his 21st century “Wapping”.Where and how does all this fit into real estate? Obviously, the changing face of media will no doubt affect how real estate is sold and advertised.
Linked here last weekend, here's more details from Borrell Associates report into online real estate advertising ...
Toward the end of 2005, the nearly rotten started looking truly rotten. As home sales slowed down and the inventory of unsold homes grew, the Internet became the most-used method of selling a home – beating out even the old-faithful yard sign. The $11 billion spent on total real estate advertising stagnated, growing less than four percent over the past four years, while the available advertising inventory – the number of existing homes for sale on the market – rose 41 percent in the last 12 months. ... We expect that this tipping point will help propel Internet real estate advertising to a $2 billion level this year and push it past $3 billion by 2010, surpassing newspapers in terms of advertising market share.
Despite all the hype about agents and brokers already advertising on the Internet, there is huge room for growth. Sixty-one percent of agents do not advertise on the Internet. And 87 percent of agents are not buying keywords on Google or Yahoo.
There appears to be some level of disruption occurring within the ranks of the agents themselves. The real estate bonanza has brought an influx of new agents who seem hell-bent on using the Internet to reach new customers. In our survey of 535 agents, we found that 64 percent of the less tenured agents were likely to advertise online while only 36 percent of the agents selling homes for more than 10 years were likely to advertise online. The rest of the findings indicate that an Internet-marketing gap exists between newer and long-time agents.
Finally, we must note the emergence of what we call the “new kids on the block.” Sites with names that might be more fitting of rap stars – like Trulia, edgeio, Oodle and CityCribs – may wind up being the new disruptors to the “old” business models of paid online listings. With the elements of change in place, they are definitely models to watch.
www.BorrellAssociates.com
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