3,000+ new places for targeted

3,000+ new places for targeted advertising? What do you call a Web site that's got detailed information on every single property in the county, whether it's for sale or not? How about, "A great site to put a targeted ad in front of a potential client?" Or, alternatively, "My friendly local county assessor's property search page." There are upwards of 3,000 counties in the U.S., and if not all of them offer online property searches today, you can bet it's only a matter of time before they do. Spokane County, Wash. is looking at selling ad space on its property search Web site, but the county auditor says accepting paid advertising might raise questions about the county's impartiality. Assessor Ralph Baker wants to "offer a little bit of an entrepreneurial spirit to this and run it in a way that defrays the cost of running my office," the Spokesman Review reports.

Nearby Yakima County is already bringing in about $9,600 a year in ad revenue from advertisers (including two title insurers) on its property search page (pictured), which gets 450,000 page views a month.

Sounds like a great way to target an audience? The county manager for First American Title Insurance Company says the company has no idea whether anyone's paying attention to the company's ad.
--Matt Carter, Inman News

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