WebHomeUSABlog

Got Zillow?

In case you haven't been watching, Zillow just did it again.

Zillow can now identify and target homes for sale:

• Through deals for bulk uploading listing data with ERA (80,000 listings/day) and the RE/MAX franchise in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, DC.
• By finding out that a home's for sale, when the owner claims their home on Zillow (300,000 and 92,000 "Make-Me-Move" listings) and corrects the info, to get their home ready for sale.
• Crunching the traffic numbers (4 MM visitors/month) from all their street-address linked Web-pages for over 70 million of the 83 MM homes in the USA, checking the surge in traffic around the home sale (50% of Zillow's traffic comes between the initial listing and the purchase offer).
• And now Zillow inks a deal with 11 newspaper chains and over 280 newspapers to upload their (used to be our) home listing and open house classified ads.

You mean we can't hide our listings away from many of the buyers wanting to see them, and from all the search engines wanting to provide them to home buyers? The newspapers can't do that, can they?

"Don't make it difficult to buy a house." Chuck Bode, CRS (Real Estate), N.P. Dodge Company, Omaha, NE.

Can any Broker afford to wait, and not sign on with Zillow? What part of "Free" don't they understand?

We can't beat 'em, so why not join them?

• Free Web-page
• Free online exposure
• Free advertising for your listing

How much closer to "an offer we can't refuse" can Zillow make?

It's said, "Chickens can't fly, because mother hens keep their chicks too close". If we keep our listings too close, they'll never fly either.

You mean Zillow is a media company, like Zillow says? Not a Real Estate Broker, like we fear?

Can Zillow actually make money by selling ads, like Google does; and not by selling homes, like I do?

Can the National MLS = Zillow's listings of every home for sale in the US = the MLZ, be far off?

GOT ZILLOW?

Posted by: Cliff Jacobson

Adapt Or Die!  Happy Searching.

WebHomeUSAblog; The Blog of Real Estate Search Marketing

Pinpoint Targeting, For Ads Not Houses

Over the past several months Zillow has gone on a country wide hiring spree, spending some of their $87MM VC cache/cash. The WSJ compared Zillow's use of a new form of interview with speed dating.

I don't know if any Realtors were recruited, interviewed or hired, but these new employees were recruited for Zillow's new national sales force and their Home Direct Ads Program, selling pinpoint-targeted online ads to regional, national and international companies, wanting to target their ads by location or any specific Real Estate demographic.

How did Woolworth amass one of the world's great fortunes by selling things for 5 and 10 cents?

How can Google make money by selling keyword-relevant search ads for less than a dollar?

Can Zillow make money by selling Google-Like Ads on its 83 million pages?

In talking to Realtors about Zillow, most have a basic misunderstanding of how different Zillow is from agents, brokers and directly selling houses. Zillow is much more like their newspaper, their Google and/or their favorite media company.

When the money on the Internet was in being a subscription-model portal, everyone wanted to be "The Next AOL." If all the money in Real Estate is in home selling, every company should want to be "The Next Realogy". But if you believe in the network-media business model of Free Content > Drive Traffic > Sell Ads, then the rich future lies in being "The Google of Real Estate."

Not that Google isn't trying to crack Real Estate itself with Google Base, but the other battles fighting for supremacy in Video Search, Blog Search and Social Media, even Google made be spread too thin to address Real Estate, as Zillow is doing. It's Zillow's only game, unless you still believe Zillow wants to broker houses as well as ads.

Zillow's new  Home Direct Ads Program uses their new sales force to sell ads to regional and national companies wanting to target the demographics of location, down to the individual home; and feature, down to the specific demographic.

One of Zillow's first campaigns was for Sony, who wanted to target their ads for Vaio Laptops to homes selling for $1 Million or more. Zillow can do that, now. Zillow can do that, wow!

But how does Zillow know when a home is for sale?:

• Zillow has just signed up ERA and the RE/MAX Brokerages in VA, MD and DC to bulk load their listings to Zillow.
• Zillow has almost 1 million home owners who have "claimed" their home's page, and Zillow knows when these owners list.
• Zillow crunches the numbers. Fifty percent of Zillow's visitor traffic comes between the time a home is listed for sale and the purchase offer is signed.

Three strikes and you're in.

But most verticals have the same basic problem: the reason you're there is not to click ads.

It would be unusual for Zillow to be effective selling Google-Like ads on its vertical Real Estate site. Other verticals, like Social Networking site, FaceBook, and the Video Search site,YouTube, have such poor click-through-rates (CTRs), that they've had to add different types of ads like: Banner, Display/Graphic, sponsorship, product placement, and text integrated ads to try to realize their traffic monetizing predictions.

As long as Zillow sticks to giving Realtors free exposure, trying to sell us ads and not stealing our commissions or eating our lunch; we should focus our energies money and concerns on our true Buggy Men: the DOJ, the FTC, the FSBOs and the Discount Brokers.

Posted by: Cliff Jacobson

Adapt Or Die!  Happy Searching.

WebHomeUSAblog; The Blog of Real Estate Search Marketing

Home Direct Ads, Zillow Moves Toward Selling Ads, Not Houses

On October 30, Zillow took even more scare out of Realtor's Halloween by taking another step toward selling targeted ads, not selling houses, with its Home Direct Ads Program. "Trick or Treat", Anyone?

Since Zillow was a gleam in Richard Barton's eye, Realtors, and many commentators, haven't bought his argument that Zillow was only interested in selling ads. In Real Estate you have to sell houses to make money, right?

Why just be the next Realogy of Real Estate, when you can be the first Google of Real Estate? (Look at Realogy and Google's recent stock performances. You be the judge.) The only broker Zillow's becoming, is an ad broker.

Would Venture Capitalists (VCs) be interested, to the tune of $87 MM, in a start-up Real Estate Broker, that's never sold a house? I thought Warren Buffett's was the only mogul buying up Real Estate firms (and letting them keep their names).

Zillow's patent-pending Home Direct Ads Program allows advertisers to connect with Zillow's 70 MM (of 83 MM) home owners by any Zillow demographic, down to the individual home.

Zillow can identify houses for sale by the listings of owners and Brokers, and also by the traffic or site-visitation patterns on the specific home's page. A spike in home views indicates the home is for sale. When many home owners are about to list, they check their home's valuation on Zillow.

After the listing, an average of 15 buyers make trips to the address on Zillow (half of all Zillow's traffic)to check out the valuation. Wallah, a market list of all the homes for sale, with the demographics advertisers drool for.

Zillow now can identify these homes for sale and sell ads on these sites by location, down to the street address, price, a great indicator of family income, and/or by any other demographic Zillow tracks.

Two months ago Sony began buying targeted ads for their Vaio laptop computers on homes selling for over $1 MM. For advertisers the most important "Location, Location, Location" is on "Zillow, Zillow, Zillow."

When a home owner uses Zillow's remodeler wizard, Zillow can also track this behavior and sell ads on the home's site to companies interested in reaching the home remodeler.

Zillow already has EZ Ads, a self-service ad sales vehicle, for local companies, including Realtors, to put display ads on homes in specific Zip Codes.

Zillow the House Broker is dead. Long live Zillow the Ad Platform.

Posted by: Cliff Jacobson

Adapt Or Die!  Happy Searching.

WebHomeUSAblog; The Blog of Real Estate Search Marketing