Zillow Changes Self-Serve Ad Platform

Since launching self-service EZ Ads in April 2007, Zillow.com has set a new standard for simple-to-buy, one-price ads, and 13,000 (mostly) local advertisers responded. Typical ad spends were about $50.

Now as Zillow begins to have its inventory sold to 282 members of Yahoo’s newspaper consortium, it is rebranding EZ Ads as “Showcase Ads,” a self-serve platform that enables advertisers to buy “25, 50, 75, or 100 percent of the available ad views on searches for homes within a given ZIP code.” Advertisers are provided the number of impressions they can expect to get with their purchase along with real-time updates on their ads performance.

The company says it is making the change because advertisers are asking to be seen on every page, and also because Showcase’s descriptive branding is easier for newspapers to sell over the phone. It should also, of course, boost average ad spends, while muddying up the buying environment (a little).

The ads run in 30-day increments, and pricing is based on the geographic location of the ad, taking into consideration the online traffic the area receives and the local median home value. For example, 25 percent of page views in a dense Seattle ZIP code (98103) is promised to provide 13,000 impressions in 30 days and is priced at $136. Pricing in the rural Washington ZIP code of 98244 promises to provide fewer than 500 impressions and costs $10.