If you’ve been looking to buy a home recently, or bought one, you’ve probably overpaid. If you’ve sold a house this year, you probably made a great return on your initial investment. The real estate market is on FIRE right now across the country, making it the perfect industry to talk to about digital advertising.
When we break down the impact of real estate in our economy, there’s no arguing the positive impact it has. In fact, in 2020, the real estate industry accounted for $3.83trillion or 18.3% of the GSP (gross state product).
With such an impact to our economy, real estate agents and the entire industry are making some good money. And, when they make good money, they spend good money.
According to the BIA, early estimates for the real estate vertical indicate the real estate industry as a whole will spend $3.79 Billion on local advertising this year in 2021. This estimate includes both Realtors as well as real estate Development.
With so much money being spent on local advertising, how will that money be divided? Online will get the largest share of the ad pie with about 40%, which is followed closely by Mobile at just over 20%. That’s 60% of budgets ($2.27 Billion) being spent on true digital advertising – not including digital magazines, email marketing, online directories, etc!
Let’s break this down into 2 categories: Real Estate Developers vs. Realtors. Both of these categories are using a similar selection of products to promote themselves. The only big difference is the budgets that are being used.
According to BIA Advantage,
- Real estate developers are estimated to spend $884.6Million, with digital accounting for 69.2% share of wallet.
- Realtors are estimated to spend 1.8Billion, with digital accounting for 73.2% share.
Real estate Developers:
When we take a deeper look into the breakout of the products they are using, we see that Display, Video, and Paid Search Ads make up 73.8% of their budgets.
When we look at Realtors, we’re looking at comparable percentages:
Let’s examine some of these products and how these developers are using them.
The largest share of budget goes to Display Ads.
With Display Ads, we are showing ads across all devices, appearing on websites or apps, using different targeting strategies. These are your typical banner ads that you see when you go online.
Behavioral Targeting – Showing your display ads to specific consumers based on their previous online behavior and what they’ve shown an interest in, across all devices.
When it comes to behaviors, there are lots of real estate related categories to choose from. Here are just a few so you can see how targeted this product can get:
Mortgage – $200,000-$249,000
Mortgage – $250,000-$349,000
Mortgage – $350,000-$449,999
Mortgage – $450,000-$749,000
Mortgage – $60,000-$119,999
Mortgage – $750,000-$999,999
Mortgage – Over $1,000,000
Customers > Century 21
Customers > Coldwell Banker Realty
Customers > Keller Williams Realty
Customers > Prudential real estate
Customers > RE/MAX
Customers > Sotheby’s real estate
In-market for home:
Listing Price > $1,000,000+
Listing Price > $100,000-$199,999
Listing Price > $200,000-$299,999
Listing Price > $300,000-$399,999
Listing Price > $400,000-$499,999
Listing Price > $500,000-$599,999
Listing Price > $600,000-$699,999
Listing Price > $700,000-$799,999
Listing Price > $800,000-$899,999
Listing Price > $900,000-$999,999
Keyword Targeting – Showing your display ads on webpages and apps that contain keywords related to your business, across all devices.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) – Showing your display ads to people using machine learning to target consumers based on who is engaging with the ad, across all devices.
Retargeting – Following people after they leave your website and showing them your display ad, on other websites and apps they go to, across all devices.
When we look at their usage of mobile, we look at our Mobile Conquesting™ product. Here’s one of the reasons that they are using Mobile:
With numbers like that, and targeting categories to choose from, it’s no wonder developers are targeting mobile devices:
real estate
real estate loans
real estate tax searchers
real estate video services
real estate law
real estate schools
real estate buyers and brokers
real estate investments
real estate research services
real estate consultants
real estate syndicators
real estate support services
real estate appraisers
real estate management
real estate inspection
real estate exchangers
real estate – time sharing
real estate developers
real estate settlement service
real estate – rental service
real estate information reports
real estate buyers’ representatives
real estate maintenance protection plans
house buyers
relocation service
apartment finding & rental service
housing-rental
housing consultants
rental agencies
house plans
home contractors
home builders
House Buyers – People who have been to Open Houses
Open house visitors
Open house visitors of homes over 1 million
Open house visitors of homes $500k – $1 million
Open house visitors of homes $200k – $500k
Open house visitors of homes less than $200K
In addition to targeting mobile devices by behaviors, industry professionals can also geo-fence other new home developments, newer communities, and even some hot zip codes as to where new home buyers may be visiting to view homes. Utilizing the Geo-Retargeting element that’s available, not only can we target people when they are looking at the model homes, but we can also continue to target them after they leave those developments.
Another tool, used more by Realtors than the developer side, is the Address Targeting capability. Address Targeting is drawing hundreds or even thousands of tiny geo-fences around an address (business or residential) to serve ads to consumers on their mobile phones and tablets. Address Retargeting is continuing to serve ads to those same people when they leave their houses and use their mobile devices. Advertisers can target a list of current customers, past customers, or any type of first party database list they have collected. These ads can be mobile display or video ads.
With Address targeting, realtors can pull a list from the MLS database in any manner that they want. They could pull a list of homes that all have XYZ% equity, or where the Loan to Value Ratio is a certain %. Then, with this database, we can brand the realtor with everyone that lives in those homes.
Lastly, the real estate industry uses search (Google Ad Words).
Typically, we see these types of ads reserved more for the emergency services or something a user my need last minute. Examples would include Urgent Care Centers, Plumbing, or HVAC companies.
As you can see in the example above, there aren’t any actual realtors (at least in Las Vegas) that show up in that search. And that’s because only 24% of agents use them for prospecting. For those agents that have yet to explore this option, make sure you have a full understanding of the types of ads, and ad extensions available to you here with Cherry Creek Media.