Newspaper Deal to Sell ‘Featured Listings’ for Zillow Launches
To all the skeptics who thought that Zillow’s deal with newspapers would never roll out … next week, The Philadelphia Inquirer, San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News and Richmond Times-Dispatch are selling featured listings for Zillow at the same time as they are placing their classifieds.
More newspapers will be added each week. The participating newspaper companies include Hearst, Journal Register, Lee Enterprises, Media General, MediaNews Group, Morris Communications, Paddock Publications, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, E.W. Scripps, Times-Shamrock and The Day Publishing Co.
A Zillow spokesperson reminds me that this is part of a broader partnership that includes mutual tool development and information sharing (i.e., open house listings from the newspapers, Zestimates and mortgage broker listings from Zillow). These features will be coming out later this year.
This will be interesting to watch. Collaboration is something that will definitely help the industry prosper in the future. Zillow will definitely help their newspaper partners extend their brand to online users that never think of the newspaper.