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_solution_benifit.aspx

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?

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

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!

I mean how can you go wrong with your fair share of 5 million visitors in your specific category and geographical area!

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.