Winners And Losers at zillow.com

Online US real estate marketplace zillow.com has published a blog post revealing the qualities of the best-performing ads, and lowest performing ads, on its website.

Sara Bonert, Director of Broker Relations at zillow.com, writes:

“zillow.com makes money by selling ads on the site. But, to be a successful media company, we need to make sure our customers are realising success with their ads.”

The number one finding was that listing ads work better than agent head shot ads, in terms of generating good click through rates.

Other observations from the Top 50 performing ads on Zillow included:

• 100% were ads for listings
• 45 of 50 ads were an exterior home shot, 3 were interior, 2 were aerials
• 42 of the ads mentioned a specific area (neighborhood, city or addres)
• 8 central messages revolved around Short Sale, Foreclosure or price reduction
• 2 were Open House ads
• 0 photos were renderings (illustrations), all were actual photos
• 0 ads promoted a specific person, business or brand
• 22 of the ads had a specific price visible
• 7 had a phone number visible
• 50 had photos that were taken on a sunny day

And observations from the Bottom 20 performing ads on Zillow included:

• 18 of the ads promoted an agent/broker/brand
• 1 did not have a photo (and no clicks)
• 1 had some type of call-to-action on the ad

One comment posted by Al Lorenz in response to the blog agreed with the findings, saying:

“We’ve found the same thing, by testing various ads, that advertising specific strengths, with pictures, of our client’s properties is much more productive than advertising the brokerage or brand. Our clients like it much more also!”

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