A New Kind of Ad on Zillow.com

Date:June 23, 2008 | Author: | Category:Advertising

Over the next few weeks, you may start to see some for-sale listings that look a little different than what usually turns up in our typical search results. They’re called “featured listings,” and it’s an advertising program we’re beginning with a number of our newspaper partners and the real estate professionals who buy classified listings through these local papers. How it works — a real estate agent, brokerage or home seller who buys a classified ad via their local paper will soon have the option to also buy a “featured listing” on Zillow in the same phone call. These listings are called out on Zillow.com as “featured” alongside all the 2.5 million+ free listings currently on the site. For agents and sellers, it’s a way to further market the home for sale.

For real estate agents and home sellers, the “featured listing” product increases their listing’s exposure beyond the local paper and on to the more than 5 million people who visit Zillow each month. We’ll be rolling this out via the sales staff of more than 130 newspapers in the coming months, including the Philadelphia Inquirer, Richmond Times-Dispatch, San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News, Houston Chronicle and Tampa Tribune. This is just the first step; we plan to roll out the ability to buy featured listings directly from Zillow to all our advertisers later this year.

Meanwhile, listing a home on Zillow remains free for anyone — agent, brokerage or home seller — either manually or via the Zillow Listings Feed program. Free Zillow listings include an unlimited number of photos, detailed contact information, updated home facts, detailed home features and links to an agent’s Web site, listing site and Zillow profile.

Our goal here is to give consumers a superior search experience for for-sale listings, while at the same time offering agents and sellers more opportunities to gain exposure for their listings. As you start to notice this new feature pop up around the site– please do let us know what you think.