Online Real Estate Technology

Remember my recent post about traditional media and the big disconnect regarding real estate agents marketing budgets? coming out of the US today is the news that Zillow.com is expanding its relationship with key newspapers to give national advertisers in the US news ways to reach local markets.

Zillow’s new offering will target advertising from real estate agents and industries looking to serve new homeowners. This could include teleco’s wanting to pitch new phone and Internet services and retailers wishing to sell new furniture as well as tradespeople wanting to advertise to a very targeted market.

The way the new system will work is that Zillow.com will use targeting technology, so that real-estate and related ads can appear anywhere on a newspaper’s site, not just within the real-estate section.

Zillow will identify an Internet user as a likely home buyer based on visits to its site. At Zillow, on line real estate searchers can list a home for sale or see what it might sell for. Once a home is sold, traffic to that listing tends to come mostly from its new owner, letting Zillow flag the visiting computer as belonging to a recent home buyer.

This new relationship also allows newspapers to charge more for their on line adds by directly targeting on line readers more likely to buy the products.

Both companies are calling this a one stop shop style of solution for advertisers.

I’ll watch this with interest over the next few months.