The migration of real estate advertising has started in earnest from the print media to the internet. Newspaper classified advertising is down and will continue to migrate south as it is one of the least effective forms of advertising today.

“Real estate agents and real estate advertising are undergoing a very significant transition period, which is certainly not a surprise,” observed Peter Zollman, founding principal of Classified Intelligence, publisher of the Real Estate Advertising 2006 report. “And when it comes out the other end,” he continued, “online will be a substantial winner and daily newspaper print is going to be a significant loser.”

According to the study’s findings, 19 percent of the 100 real estate agents surveyed online this June spent less than 20 percent of their total ad budgets on newspaper print ads, and 17 percent steered clear of print paper ads altogether. Although many said their overall ad spend will increase this year, money isn’t simply shifting directly to the Web. Sixty-one percent of respondents did not buy into online newspapers at all.
“Local newspaper Web sites, which in many cases have done a very good job of developing online tools, are not viewed very highly by the real estate agents,” opined Zollman. via ClickZ Network.

And the main reason is search. Try looking for a home in the classified section of your Sunday paper. It is brutal. Try looking through the Saturday insert for a home in a specific neighborhood though the ads that the real estate agents take out. Almost impossible.

Now do the same search online. Realtor.com and Yahoo Real Estate can target the homes by zip code and price and sometimes even subdivision. 3 minutes of work versus 1 hour going through the newspaper. And that is why newsprint real estate advertising will die. It is too inefficient and to expensive to justify.

Of course, it will not die right away. The reason? Home sellers. They see the barometer of marketing their home as an ad the real estate agent can show them that ran in the paper. And the problem with this is that the real estate agent KNOWS they just threw away their own money for something that is useless.

If I was selling our home today, I would tell the real estate agent to create a website for the home. Have them invest in search engine optimization to get the site higher in the search engines and market it like heck on the internet. That is where the buyers are.

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