Realtor.com’s latest attack at Zillow Group (ZG) took it to the streets, removing a house from the residential block by wrapping it in what they say is a real-life analogy of homes that Zillow users are missing out on.
The online real estate listing service wrapped a home that is currently on the market in Austin, Texas and brokered by GoodLife Realty.
The words “Searching for a home to buy on Zillow? You’re missing out on thousands like this” are inscribed on the wrapping, which will stay up until Nov. 14.
This is a part of realtor.com's recent campaign against Zillow, with this particular advertisement trying to shows how realtor.com lists many more MLS-listed, for-sale homes than its main competitor.
In light of the campaign, Realtor.com conducted an internal analysis in October, which said realtor.com provides at least 20% more – or an estimated 300,000 more – MLS-listed homes among its for-sale listings nationwide than Zillow.com.
However, in response, Zillow's spokesperson Amanda Woolley cautioned in a statement, “Anyone can selectively pull data to tell the story they want to tell.”
“The fact is, Zillow and Trulia listings breadth is more comprehensive and accurate than it has ever been, with more than 350 direct MLS partnerships signed in just the past year," according to the statement.
"And the Zillow brand continues to be the most favored consumer brand by far, with more than half of all real estate category visits coming to Zillow, which is nearly double the size the nearest competitor,” Woolley added.
Move (MOVE), which operates the realtor.com website, announced in May that it would spend more than it has ever spent on a branding, advertising and marketing campaign in order to fight in its war for listing and ad dominance with Zillow Group.
The News Corp acquisition of Move and the merger of Zillow and Trulia have changed the game in the online listings and advertising marketplace.
At stake in the “fight between behemoths,” as Move’s CEO Ryan O’Hara put it, are ads and listings that exceed $9 billion.
The fight between which company is better isn’t simple to calculate.
Buildzoom published a lengthy studying on the two companies, saying, “…(T)he number of listings being provided still varies widely from city to city. According to comScore, Zillow and Trulia combined attract far more web traffic than Realtor.com,” said BuildZoom.com Chief Economist Issi Romem. “However, since News Corp (NWSA) acquired realtor.com the number of unique visitors to that site has steadily grown.”
According to Buildzoom, Zillow Group’s two portals — Zillow.com and Trulia.com — get more traffic than realtor.com, but Zillow Group sites have fewer listings in most markets, and the two are losing ground in traffic.
Looking at Zillow’s most recent third-quarter earnings, it said it had more than 142 million average monthly unique users visited Zillow Group and its brands during the third quarter.
Here are the latest moves from both companies, both revolving around major acquisitions.
At the beginning of October, Move announced the acquisition of Reesio, a document and transaction management platform that allows the entire real estate transaction to be done online.
The Reesio acquisition came two months after the Zillow Group (Z) announced its own acquisition of an online document company, DotLoop, which Zillow has big plans for.
