trulia.com Sells Local Ads

trulia.com has released a self-service platform allowing Trulia Pro subscribers to purchase a share of advertising space on its search results and listing pages.

The US-based real estate search engine says its new Trulia Local Ads option will give advertisers the ability to “lock up” a share of their local market and “dominate” their competition.

The ads show listing data and information from the advertiser’s trulia.com profile, and can be displayed at both city and zip code levels. They can also be tracked in terms of traffic and click through rates, allowing advertisers to adjust their campaign accordingly.

“Through our testing, we know dynamic, hyper-local ads perform five times better than the industry average for traditional static banner ads,” trulia.com CEO Pete Flint is quoted as saying.

Flint recently said trulia.com would be focusing on mobile and local information this year, and the search engine isn’t wasting time on either front.

In fact, trulia.com has just added new features to its mobile website, providing information on schools, an agent contact directory, and access to its blogs and real estate guides.

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   trulia.com may not have managed to take out another Webby Award this year, but the US real estate search engine has just expanded its recently-added local area ratings to include user-generated reviews. The question is, will these new user-focused additions have an effect on trulia.com's market position?...

2. What Could trulia.com Have in Store?

   trulia.com continued to attract attention from property hunters during the first quarter of this year and says we can expect to see "more big things" in Q2. The search engine isn't giving anything away, but our guess is that an iPad application is in the works. ...

3. trulia.com Celebrates 2009 Success

   Following zillow.com's reports of record traffic numbers in 2009, US real estate search engine trulia.com has released its own set of figures that claim visits are up by 45 percent. According to the search engine, 2009 was its biggest year ever with a total of 62.3 million unique visitors. trulia.com says internal data has page views up 105 percent and property views up by over 130 percent. Trulia Voices also doubled in terms of the number of consumer questions asked, and almost 1 million home buyer inquiries were sent to real estate agents throughout the year....

4. trulia.com Property Comparison Function

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5. trulia.com Looking for Investor

   trulia.com CEO Pete Flint has revealed an interest in attracting an outside investor that would allow employees and owners to cash in their shares without waiting for an initial public offering. "We get inquiries frequently, if not weekly, from people who want to take us public or invest in our business," Flint is quoted as saying....