Zillow Launches Newspaper Ad Network

Zillow and its 11 newspaper publisher partners have announced the launch of an ad network:

Under the Zillow Advertising Network agreement, sales teams for both Zillow and Zillow Newspaper Consortium members will offer each other’s premium advertising inventory to their respective client bases. Local newspaper advertisers will be able to reach Zillow’s national audience of more than five million unique visitors per month, with 90 percent owning a home and two-thirds buying or selling now or in the next one to two years. Meanwhile Zillow advertisers gain access to the local audience visiting real estate sections of the newspapers’ Web sites, as well as additional national advertising inventory across the Zillow Newspaper Consortium.

Last fall, Zillow announced a real-estate newspaper consortium that includes almost 300 local papers from the 11 publishers.

For the papers it means more high-quality distribution for their real estate advertisers on a national or local level. This includes use of targeting capabilities on Zillow that can reach the zip, neighborhood or street (down to the house). This means demographic/income targeting. However, there’s a question in my mind re whether local newspaper advertisers will be able take advantage of these sophisticated capabilities.

For Zillow it also means something interesting: local distribution for any advertiser the company sells to. That means the company can simply represent itself to national advertisers as a way to reach high quality local users, not just real-estate audiences. Online newspaper readers constitute a highly desirable audience. (See also, the OPA study on local sites.)

Real estate purchases (or sales) are life events that suggest other purchases (e.g., furniture) and thereby implicate a broader range of advertisers than just realtors and mortgage lenders. In addition, contractors and home services are very clearly implicated.

The newspaper world is now flush with ad networks. In addition to Zillow, there are: Centro (not a network exactly), quadrantOne, the Yahoo! newspaper consortium, Google Print (only for print) and the diminishing legacy newspaper networks (e.g., NNN). In theory these can all be complementary. The question is which ones generate the most ad revenue for the beleaguered newspaper publishers.

The newspapers that are part of the Zillow Ad Network at launch include Hearst Newspapers; Lee Enterprises, Incorporated; Media General, Inc.; MediaNews Group, Inc.; Morris Communications Company, Philadelphia Media Holdings; and The E.W. Scripps Company.

Here’s more from ClickZ.

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In May, Zillow competitor Trulia launched its own real-estate ad network.