According to Funda.nl CEO Marque Joosten, the newspaper classifieds for real estate listings in Netherland are dead. He advises those in the United States to invest their advertising money online rather than in print.
He mentioned that 85% of the population in the Netherlands use the internet with about 90% of those users using broadband. Slightly different in our neck of the woods don’t you think? A significant portion of the U.S. population still uses the print media to advertise and still uses dial-up, cough. Why? Because people still look there. Especially those that are not internet savvy.
The ants go marching one by one hoorah, hoorah… ~ childrens song
We may be behind, but it’s coming. I wouldn’t want to be in the newspaper ad sales business in the next five years.
I predict many newspapers will go by the way side also. Have you ever tried to submit a press release and not even get a response: yay or nay? By the time a reporter goes through the bureacracy of publishing a story the news story may have changed. When a breaking story happens: just zip over to google and put in the city and a few key words about the story plus the word blog…and you’ll have nitty gritty details in a minute. I recognize that everything you read online is not 100% accurate, but at least you can get closer to the story than waiting for the paper media.
A case in point: when the man in New York burned down his apartment unit to get back at his wife(how unfortunate) it was said he wrote an email to his wife explaining his actions; well that exact email was online in a matter of minutes from when it was announced. (unfortunate story but an illustration)
In regard to Real Estate; by the time you see an ad in the paper that house may have already sold; at least online the realtor can quickly get that listing down. The other advantage: the ability to show detailed pictures.
Blogs are growing: do you realize just as wiki is the largest human encyclopedia, that blogs are just the beginning of the largest global human newspaper. We are all partaking in a historic moment unlike any other and the whole world is apart of it.
Thanks sellsius for posting on this.
Print advertising is GONZO is urban markets. We really dont follow trends in suburbia…but expect it to lag 18-36 months behind the cities…mainly because of broadband use & constriction on free time. Yup, City Folk tend to work longer hours & have less free time…using the Internet as a strategic tool for all of their needs.
Print classifieds are long gone in our markets….the only thing we still see to be somewhat effective is the use of high-end magazines to attracting the ‘upper’ ‘upper’ class home-buyers.
I heard Jim Sherry make an interesting statement on this topic on a panel at NARdiGRAS. He said: I think we advertise so much print, because you can’t measure the effectiveness…so it’s an even worse deal than you think it is.
It takes me longer to even FIND the real estate section in the newspaper than it takes me to find a certain property or search for one on the internet.
jim - yeah, they have lost lot’s of revenue in the last few years due to the growth of online classifieds such as craigslist. that’s why they are starting to focus on the newspapers online classifieds section more and more.
sandra - so true. news travels fast online. wicked fast in fact. print has it’s place but online venues and blogs are pushing hard to create and spread the news in real time.
it’s unfortunate that some real estate agents don’t take advantage of inputting multiple photos and all the details within a listing. i’ve heard that the reasoning may be because they want them to call - meaning less info = higher likelyhood of receiving a call or email. sometimes, that logic backfires and they skip your listing.
condo blog - this is what we keep on hearing too. it’s interesting that it still pays to advertise in the high-end magazines. don’t they use the internet?
sherry - thanks for the feedback. you bring up a very valid point - tracking your ROI. if you can’t measure your stats, then how do you justify the expenditures?
athol -
we’ve experienced that too. i wonder if anyone out there has anything positive to share about their experiences advertising in the print classifieds? i won’t hold my breath 
Hey Sellius,
It’s Sean from Trulia. We just posted another vblog - http://truliablog.com/. This time we sat down with Steve Ozonian, former President of Realtor.com and current Chairman of Help-U-Sell, to discuss the future of real estate brokerage. Check it out and let us know what you think. Glad you picked it up last time around!
Cheers mate!
sean - thanks for the tip. we’ll be happy to take a look at it.