Guest Post: Real Estate Advertising 2.0

The Google model of paying per click has influenced all types of advertising models. It has made a significant dent in the old Real Estate Advertising 1.0 - "pay per line and hope model" of the newspapers or the "pay per page and hope model" of the magazines.

The future of real estate advertising suggests that someone gets paid only for results. I advertise something for you and you pay me based on what I do for you to get leads. If that is the case, the day will come soon when even the brokers figure out how to make that work for their own Web sites. When aggregated, local broker Web site traffic reaches the tens if not hundreds of millions of visitors now annually.

Consumers going to broker Web sites to search for listings. In the not too distant future brokers could advertise their own listings in each other's searches and pay each other the Google way - pay per click to a listing detail page. I see this as the evolving Advertising 2.0 model -- consumers going to a broker's site to see their listings and then being linked directly to another broker's site to see that brokers listings. Makes good sense to me and to every other consumer that wants detailed and accurate information on a specific listing.  Sure beats sketchy and incomplete IDX data.

And what about the traditional broker-to-broker referral fees in this new age of Advertising 2.0? Good question, what about them?

--Ken Jenny, TranCen

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