Real estate site Zillow.com, which focuses on house price comparisons has entered a deal with the publishers of 282 newspapers to carry their real estate advertisements.
Local advertisers who place their print and online listings with the newspapers can choose to have their ads displayed on Zillow. The site attracts four million visitors every month, with 70 percent buying or selling a home now.
The Zillow deal consists of 11 newspaper publishers including Hearst Newspapers, The E.W. Scripps Company, MediaNews Group, and Media General. Major market newspapers include the San Jose Mercury News, The San Francisco Chronicle, Houston Chronicle and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Financial terms of the deal were not released.
Zillow and the newspapers companies are scheduled to launch the partnership in the first half of 2008. More newspapers companies are expected to join the partnership before the official launch.
Some of the newspaper companies in the Zillow agreement are part of a newspaper consortium, which formed a year ago. The consortium started with a partnership with Yahoo for online recruitment advertising. The agreement has expanded to include regular online advertising network distribution, online text ads, and content sharing between Yahoo and consortium newspapers
“Research shows that 80 percent of home buyers use the Internet in the home-buying process,” said Lloyd Frink, Zillow president. “That, combined with Zillow’s audience of engaged real estate enthusiasts, creates a huge opportunity for local brokerages looking to expand their reach online.”
