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Trulia Pro Pros and Cons: Ad Network Review

Published by Joseph Ferrara (2) June 19th, 2008 in Trulia. Comments

Real estate search engine Trulia just released an ad offering. It’s open to anyone, not just real estate agents.

Here’s my review of the Pros and Cons:

Pros

  1. Unlimited featured listings: the main benefit for listing agents, in my opinion & worth the price of admission for these agents
  2. Affordable: $39 month or $348 year
  3. No minimum contract
  4. 3 months free if you advertise somewhere else (limited offer)
  5. Trulia gets 5 million unique visitors a month — a targeted ad should get a lot of traffic; so, even a very low click rate will get you eyeballs
  6. Advertiser gets 20 local areas to target– city, state, zip code (mix and match)
  7. Flat fee more easily understood than impressions or PPC
  8. Links to advertiser website (or blog) and Trulia profile
  9. Tracking measures clicks to ads
  10. Photo or other image on ad with headline
  11. Don’t have be a real estate agent to advertise
  12. Unlimited impressions (this blows away Zillow EZ Ads)

Cons

  1. Poor ad placement– the ad is below the fold. Will folks scrolling down to see the homes miss the ads?
  2. Larger competing ad appears above your spotlight ad (see below)
  3. You share the spotlight with someone else (OK if agent & mover, not so hot if 2 local agents– unless you’re the better agent :) (see below)
  4. Website promotional ad blindness (according to Neilsen studies) will impact ROI. (see Looks like a Promotion=Ignored and Banner-blindness.
  5. No local market exclusivity (your ad will be rotated with others)
  6. Ads only appear on SERPs (general search results pages) and do not appear once you click to see a home listing. (other ads DO appear on the listing page– see below) Of course, if a user clicks offsite to the broker website, your ad is 2 clicks back (unless it was rotated out).
  7. Limited amount of text allowed in spotlight ad– don’t know how much it is but the few I saw did not contain much ad copy (ads above have much more space to attract a click) (see below)

larger ad is above spotlight ad and competes for users’ attention. You share the spotlight. Ad copy appears limited.

Spotlight ad does not appear once user clicks to a home listing page– but another ad does.

Neutral/Open Questions

  1. Trulia is branded as a real estate search engine. Will consumers who search for a home be interested/diverted to click an ad that takes them away from home listings– their main purpose for being on the site?
  2. Will ads compete with listing agent’s home listings for searchers’ attention? If a home searcher is pulled away by a clever ad, has the ad worked to help the advertiser at the expense of the listing agent?
  3. Pitch on Trulia home page is only to real estate agents (not local businesses, ancillary professions) If ad platform is open to all, why not pitch to all? Also, consumers see it’s a promotional vehicle.
  4. Unlimited featured listings has no value to other professionals, businesses, or agents without listings.
  5. no follow tag. Some folks don’t like it from a perception marketing perspective. Others don’t care or don’t know what the heck a nofollow means.

My Vote: Give it a try. The positives outweigh the negatives. Knowing the Trulia gang, they will work on eliminating any negative feedback they get. Good luck all.

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  • I agree - give it a try - one year's subscription costs less than a small newspaper ad.
  • You don't even need to give it a year - try a month and see what the traffic click through is like. Traffic should be pretty well targetted and if the site recieves good traffic (im talking 1000+ per day) you should get a small percentage of clicks - of course having a well thought out ad will also help!
  • I'd say it was as close to a no-brainer as you can get, though it would be great if the spotlight ads could appear on the individual home listing like the other ones.

    The featured listing status is good because it keeps your listings off the back of the line. But the question becomes, what happens when everybody jumps on these ads, as I expect they will, and everyone's is "featured" --- it may lose any cachet it had (?) ---and a featured listing on page 4 may not be so great.
  • Arn Cenedella
    I agree - give it a try - one year's subscription costs less than a small newspaper ad.
  • Mike
    You don't even need to give it a year - try a month and see what the traffic click through is like. Traffic should be pretty well targetted and if the site recieves good traffic (im talking 1000+ per day) you should get a small percentage of clicks - of course having a well thought out ad will also help!
  • I'd say it was as close to a no-brainer as you can get (I'm signing up), though it would be great if the spotlight ads could appear on the individual home listing like the other ones.

    The featured listing status is good because it keeps your listings off the back of the line. But the question becomes, what happens when everybody jumps on these ads, as I expect they will, and everyone's is "featured" --- it may lose any cachet it had (?) ---and a featured listing on page 4 may not be so great.
  • I have seen several local agents on this site advertising and one I know who says she is getting some okay results.

    I mean how can you go wrong with your fair share of 5 million visitors in your specific category and geographical area!
  • I wouldn't worry much about the below-the-fold issue. The folks who get down below the fold are more valuable than those who don't scroll. Consider the act of scrolling to be a lead qualifier (someone really is interested in what the SERP is providing and looking through it all).

    Also ad blindness is not unique to this advertising platform. Worth mentioning for beginners, but it's important to note that this is the case for _all_ marketing efforts from billboards to websites and not just Trulia.

    Great rundown!
  • Hi Joe!

    Thanks for taking a look see at Trulia Pro.

    We are monitoring everything. Thus far, we are happy with the product and it's reception. People have provided lots of great feedback and we'll consider those thoughts and suggestions over the next few months.

    I think Spotlight Ad placement is pretty good. It's right in in the middle of the page. The larger ad units are from much larger advertisers, some nationwide. Spotlight is an opportunity for the smaller local advertiser to get their brand out in front of our targeted audience.

    No exclusivity for Spotlight. Everyone is treated equally. If there are more than two advertisers per geo, they will get equally rotated based on the specific geographic search. I think that's a good thing.

    Correct, the Spotlight ads appear on the search results pages for specific searches where they will get the most visibility.

    You get 25 characters for the headline, 35 characters for the descriptive text and 35 characters for your url display text.

    Consumers visit Trulia to search for homes and home related information. As you know, throughout the home buying and selling process, consumers use a variety of home related products and services. Spotlight gives these home related businesses a cost effective opportunity to interact with these home buyers and sellers. Consumers are free to click on the ads or not.

    Re: ads competing with listing agents - As with other websites with ads, if you are interested in an ad, you'll click on it. We'll see how it goes.

    For launch, our home page copy is specific to our primary audience - real estate agents. More info here for others - http://www.trulia.com/truliapro/howitworks/

    For non-agent advertisers, it's not about featured listings - it's about branding and reaching a targeted audience. We'll see how it goes.

    We follow standard industry practice and Google guidelines re: Spotlight ads.

    Good luck to you and all our other early adopters.

    Rudy
    Social Media Guru at Trulia
  • Thanks G. Dewald.

    Above the fold is generally considered better positioning by advertisers and gets a higher price-- sorta like eye level for food products in the supermarket. I would guess (maybe Rudy knows the answer) that Trulia charges higher rates for ads above the fold.

    I believe below the fold can work to get clicks if tied to an "action point" -- eg. where you add a comment or share a link (eg. email a friend) or go to the next page, etc. I don't see any action points near the spotlight ads. I also think the ad above it somewhat overpowers it. Let me put it this way: If agents were given a choice, I think they would choose "above" the fold.

    Those scrolling down do show a greater interest in the content-- and I think that greater interest is in the home listings-- the main content folks are after when they use search engines . Also, once a home listing is clicked the spotlight ad will NOT appear (they're only visible in the general results, as Rudy says)-- but other ads do appear on the individual home listing pages-- so, like a light switch, when the owner clicks to the home listing, your spotlight goes off. (obviously, there's no ad when they leave Trulia to go to the broker partner's site to see more about the home)

    60 characters for the ad is not much-- and I thought twitter was constricting. But hey, I can create a good ad with 4 characters: FREE.

    Unfortunately, ads and content (home listings) do compete on every website. If you have ads (or other distractions from the home listings), folks will click them and leave the site-- as a lister, I wish they didn't have that option. (When Rudy & I built Sellsius-- we made a conscious decision not to put ads on the site-- maybe we were being naive or dumb)
    http://www.sellsiusrealestate.com/html/member_s...

    Having said all that, I think the positives do outweigh the negatives. I think unlimited impressions will be the "standard" ad platform in the future -- Zillow will HAVE to change EZ ads IMO. It's like when phone companies went to unlimited calling for a fixed monthly rate-- folks didn't have to go crazy checking their bills-- it became the standard and it has spilled over into other areas & become what ordinary folks prefer. PPC and impressions are just too confusing & a harder sell-- plus they have the risk of click fraud.

    David, when is Zillow EZ ads switching over to a fixed rate? :)
  • Eddie Stewart
    Trulia can be a great tool but I prefer the Google Maps/MLS mashup by PropertyMaps. It lists properties on the MLS but also has features of RealtyTrac for foreclosure properties. It's been a great help.
  • Thanks for the tip Eddie. I'll check it out.
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