News has been coming thick and fast. It is Domain’s turn now. Ninemsn has signed an exclusive deal to carry domain.com.au’s listings starting from Monday the 1st of December.
From my understanding REA did not renew the deal which saw them paying Ninemsn for traffic, much like any advertising deal. Whilst this is not a bad deal for domain (and agents) and will increase traffic to their website, I still don’t see Ninemsn as the beast it used to be and therefore it may only have a minimal impact on traffic.
Having said that Ninemsn still do have a large visitor count, especially with people that do not know how to change their default home page.
Domain also has a deal with Ebay.com.au and Justlisted.com.au (remember them?)
Would be interesting to know where my readers actually go to view their news. Do you go to Ninemsn.com.au?
14th November 2008
One of the big pluses for ninemsn is that it’s the automatic exit site for Hotmail users. I know people who have ninemsn set as their home page, simply make Hotmail access easier.
For me, my source of news is http://www.theleader.com.au , but I’ll admit to just a smidge of bias there. :-)
14th November 2008
Peter,
How could we forget “Just Missed It,” as you pointed out it will be interesting to see with this merge if Domain can grows further as a result.
It would be interesting to find out why REA did not renew especially in light of what has just happened with their New Zealand operations.
14th November 2008
I must say I use Google Reader, Google News, NYTimes, SMH, and also ABC News
15th November 2008
Ouch! Peter, there is a double edged sword to REA’s decision.
The first side…I’m certain REA wouldn’t have made the decision not to renew the contract if Ninemsn was working for them in comparison to what they had agreed to pay.
The time on site stat for Ninemsn is probably the reason why REA didn’t renew the contract.
A large percentage of Ninemsn visitors each day would come from opening up the internet explorer browser, but then within seconds the customer types in a website address eg. Google, business2.com.au, etc and they are gone from Ninemsn.
A lot of corporate advertisers are attracted to their huge visitor numbers, but I’d be more interested in knowing a lot more about their actual conversion.
Back in the dial-up days, you couldn’t wait for the Ninemsn site to load up so you could get away from it & get on with searching the internet.
I’m sure this would be a typical terminal user habit that Ninemsn would be finding very hard to break…
When you look at the typical way the majority of people use there computer, Ninemsn would have a very low percentage click through rate per visitor.
Their time on site stat and the number of actual searches done through Ninemsn when compared to the number of visitors to their site would be a very interesting statistic.
It would be even more interesting to see if Fairfax looked into this before agreeing on a price or if they just took up the offer on the rebound…
The second side…what if Ninemsn did some modifications to their site that actually provided a better search alternative and increased their time on site stat and conversions?
Ninemsn already get the massive visitor numbers, they just need to find a way to keep them there longer.
When they do, this would be a huge coup for Fairfax and the gate could be shut on REA getting access to Ninemsn for a few years to come…
Was REA thinking too short term?
We’ve all seen a number of CEO’s come into major companies to reduce overheads & increase profits so they get the incentives they are offered within their contracts.
REA’s most profitable part of the company is it’s Australian site. Removing something that sends leads to your most profitable site, not such a great idea.
The online space can change so rapidly & with a few modifications to Ninemsn’s site it will remain to be seen whether this was a good decision or not…
Was this a good short term decision by REA. It probably was. Will it come back to bite them in a few years time…it probably will…
Who do you think has made the right decision?
16th November 2008
Who cares?
I’d like to know how many agents use both Domain and REA? While there is significant overlap many agents (and their clients) aren’t going to lose too much sleep over what really relates to how much the portals can charge for
display’ advertising.
Sal :)
16th November 2008
All the agents that I have done business with use them both, plus most of the free ones also. Depends on whether they use a bulk uploader or whether they manually upload. Ones that manually upload seem to just use Domain and realestate… couldnt be bothered uploading to anymore even if its free.
An agent i met with yesterday representing the sale of a property said that she gets all her enquiries thru REA and the local paper. Nothing thru domain or any other medium. Brisbane based btw.
As a vendor, I am just happy to have my listings on REA, via my agents. Wouldnt buy any advertising, just REA.
16th November 2008
Agree with you SSSR. And further….
My take is that ’serious’ buyers (seriously considering a purchase in the foreseeable future), search at least the 2 major portals. (Who is placed to provide such research to inform us of the reality here?)
In Vic, The Age newspaper was the place you had to advertise. REA is now the online mandatory and agents should wake up to themselves, stop being sucked-in by ridiculous sales pitches from the likes of Domain and start using more online marketing options instead of wasting $money on additional portals! (Let’s not forget also that Google still gets more real estate searches than REA too!) So, where does that place Domain and the other battlers being propped-up by scared, wasteful agents?!
(Must be a slow news week-end – Sal :)
16th November 2008
Sal Espro, You say “Who Cares?”… it mightn’t mean much to you but “I Care” and so should any agent that was promised a service, that has now been removed.
Agents pay REA subscription fees to get enquiries to their listings & REA raved on a few years ago about what a coup it was to be linked to Ninemsn as part of their sales pitch to agents.
If the visitor numbers to your listings drops because of this decision would you be happy to still pay them the same subscription fee?
If agents truly want to put pressure on these major corporations, they have to confront these decisions that ultimately effect agents.
I’m sick of seeing decisions get made by these big corporations without giving any thought to the impact it may have on their # 1 customers – the agents.
It’s like the stuff up that happened to REA’s email servers, did we ever hear of any agent getting a dollar in compensation for that stuff up? It was simply swept under the carpet.
Here’s a thought! Imagine if you told your vendor you were going to do a certain advertisement for them when you listed them, but you decided that you’re no longer going to provide that service to them any more…Would your vendor feel cheated & would you feel morally wrong for not living up to your promises?
I just wonder if REA have any feelings of guilt about removing this part of their service to agents…or once again don’t the agents rate in their decision making process?
If REA are no longer paying for the traffic from Ninemsn does that mean all the agents will get a discount? I doubt it…
16th November 2008
Interesting to note that the No 1. player in the online jobs market, Seek has also not renewed its arrangement with ninemsn either.
Appreciate everything that Greg has said but the fact is that ninemsn is no longer even close to be the big player it was a couple of years ago. They were calling the shots on price in 2006 and have come back to the big players in each of the online classified verticals this year looking for similar rates and have been sent packing.
I would say that Domain have probably got a good deal on click rates (you’d hope so but then again….) so as Greg has stated only time will tell. My money is on REA and Seek as ninemsn has dropped its act and it would seem its pants on price to get the likes of Domain onboard which would indicate some short term survival to me.
17th November 2008
Craig, The demographic of Ninemsn users would also be a very interesting stat to consider.
Due to the default home page settings, you’d imagine that Ninemsn should have a large percentage of the “new to technology – older generation” using their site.
This wouldn’t be such a critical demographic for Seek, but it’s a very important group of people for Real Estate Agents.
17th November 2008
Ninemsn gets most of its traffic from browsers and hotmail
pretty low quality traffic ,rea didnt get value for money and i guess domain are desparate to increase traffic so would have paid the big price.
17th November 2008
Totally agree with you Greg.
My point was less about REA yet again cheating their client agents (and their client vendors), and more about why agents shouldn’t be supporting ‘hangers-on’ like Domain, Realestateview etc etc and why agents should use other marketing methods already available to them.
On your side,
Sal :)
17th November 2008
Sal,
It is actually the agents decision how they intend to present themeselves and their respective businesses on the economic platforms and property portals.
We enjoy excellent success with the results that are collectively delivered to our business. There are absolutely economies of scale for a small real estate operator in the current environment. We use every available marketing method available that we believe to be of benefit collectively for our businesses, our vendors and purchasers. Not to also forget our landlords and tenants either.
17th November 2008
The Numbers: of the 229 emails we have received from REA in the three month period Aug- Oct. this year, 14 of them (6%) have come from ninemsn. Hardly a huge percentage. The ratios were the same for sales and property management. Now we may be higher or lower than other areas, but I bet the numbers are not that different from region to region.
17th November 2008
Paul, that figure is actually quite scary. I know you say you have only had 14 emails from ninemsn.
What could that equate to your business in commission dollars?
That’s also 14 more people you can have in your database that you can communicate via email with for Free… BTW – I heard of a database being sold for a 12 times multiplier? That’s right 12 times.
The other stat that could also be overlooked is the small percentage of people who actually email the agent, compared to the number of visits you have to your listings.
We’ve often used the reporting function to show the number of visits to help the owners understand how many people have viewed their property online.
These stats help with getting price reductions. ( I’m not saying you can’t still use the new reduced stats.)
Let’s do the sums. If you say it’s only 6%, then if you’ve got 30 listings with an average of say 200 visits per listing then a 6% drop equates to 360 less visits to your listings.
Yet you are paying the same subscription fee. Sorry, I just don’t think that’s the right thing for any business to do to it’s loyal customers!
18th November 2008
Let’s not get too caught up in the numbers Greg. Those 14 emails came from 8 people. Two of those 8 sent 5 emails regarding property management and the other 6 sent 9 emails on sales. So we didn’t have 14 people involved at all, only 8. We never have problems renting the few properties that become vacant. Our vacancy rate is less than 1%, so we are talking about 6 sale enquiries.
I take your point regarding the number of people that need to look at properties to generate 6 emails. In our case it has dropped to .6 of one percent in the last couple of months. Therefore there would need to be 1000 people look at the properties to generate 6 emails. Bear in mind the other 215 emails that on the same basis would need over 35,000 people viewing the properties to generate those emails. I know it’s all numbers, but if they really want to find a property in my area, they will.
18th November 2008
Paul,
I agree with you comment, “..if they really want to find a property in my area, they will”.
And that’s another reason to add to Greg and your information for agents not subscribing to more than one portal other than their own website. They can then spend their money and that of their vendors’ on value-adding particular listings and garnering more listings.