A few months ago I wrote a blog post on the dramatic shift in real estate classified ad revenues away from newspapers. We all knew it was coming and getting worse for print media. Last week the Q2 figures were published, which shows an even more challenging view; I thought I’d take a look at what’s going on in real estate.
Here’s the summary:
• Total print ads in Q2 were down 16% year-over-year
• Online ads came to only $777M in Q2, down 2.4% from the year before
• Real Estate Classified ads were down 36% over the prior year
WOW! That’s a pretty incredible drop in overall advertising revenue for the newspaper industry.
Let’s look at the real estate classified portion, the bit that I’m most interested in. Revenues here have halved in two years and it is not clear that there is a light at the end of this tunnel.
The dramatic change is seen in the chart below.
At Trulia, we believe a good portion of this expenditure will transition to online advertising products (from our perspective that’s Trulia Pro, Trulia Ads and Trulia Ad Network) but some of it will just evaporate as it is free to get exposure for listings on many large online real estate sites, including Trulia.com.
Sure, not everyone is smiling, but we think this is great news for the real estate industry and consumers. Removing costs and shifting ad spend to more efficient means will help brokers and agents build profitable businesses and also benefit home buyers and sellers as it helps take unnecessary costs out of the process. It is fascinating to watch the Industry change so quickly before our eyes.
Have you shifted your spending during the past 12-months? Share your stories in the comments; we’d love to hear them!
Update: I was interested in the changes in automotive and recruitment. You can see them here on my personal blog.
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October 2nd, 2008 at 8:14 pm
More and more real estate professionals advertising budget will move towards the Internet. I haven’t spent a dime on off line advertising in over 2 years as I direct all my efforts on line! The Internet is where the consumers are searching and that’s where real estate industry professionals need to be!