When times are tough, it may be time to get creative!

Ad company Adzookie, a free mobile advertising company, is doing something unique, not only to advertise themselves, but to help homeowners pay their mortgage.  They’re turning houses across America into billboards.

Romeo Mendoza, CEO of Adzookie.com, was struck with the idea while driving his daughter home from school.

“I saw signs outside homes saying ‘bank-owned’ and suddenly I felt for the families I imagined lived there,” said Mendoza.

“I was trying really hard to think of ways to help …then it hit me. Our company buys advertising all the time.  We could buy ad space on their house and pay them for it.”

In fact, for Adzookie.com the idea of helping others is part of their corporate infrastructure.

“Adzookie.com is a free mobile advertising company. We help local businesses reach new customers by placing free advertisements where ads get noticed the most, on smart phones,” says Mendoza.  “Promoting our business in a way that’s outrageous and fun just make sense.”

Adzookie.com is looking for homes that are owned and not rented or leased. The entire outside of the house is painted, minus the roof, the windows and any awnings.  Painting takes approximately 3 – 5 days. Adzookie.com will pay the mortgage every month for as long as the house is painted, which can be up to a year.   Homeowners can apply at http://adzookie.com/paintmyhouse.php

Ask Mendoza how many homes his company plans on painting and he’ll tell you, “As many as we can.  We’re promoting our free local mobile ad network so the more neighborhoods the better.”

On Tuesday evening, when we they launched the campaign they received approximately 1000 applications from homeowners.  As of this Wednesday, they have received at least another 3000. 90% are from homeowners under financial difficulty.  One of the applications  is from a homeowner that lives across the street from the Department of Homeland Security!

What do you think of this wacky but creative idea? Love it? Hate it? Leave me your feedback below!

Written by: Katie Lance, Social Media Director, Inman News, @katielance

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A guest post from Tim Fagan, CEO of HomeFinder.com

Things were simpler then, more familiar. You knew who to call, what to do and what to expect.

I’m talking about the good old days of real estate advertising.

Back then, you dealt with the sales rep for the local paper over a cup of coffee. Maybe you sponsored a little league team or bought a spot on the back of the church bulletin. And your audience? You could count on them to be in just a few places, at the same times, week in and week out.

Those days are long gone, a fact that has been amply documented. I won’t belabor that point.

The more important question is this: Now that the game has changed, how can we make it simpler for real estate advertisers?

Think about it: The average agent, broker or brokerage marketing director is faced with a panoply of media, formats and creative challenges these days.

On the table are:

• SEM/pay-per-click
• Brand display ads
• Direct response display ads
• Syndication
• Video
• Mobile
• Print

And this, mind you, is a growing list. Video wasn’t there three years ago; mobile wasn’t there just one year ago. Next year you may need to consider your strategy for Tweet ads, or feel pressure to get into the “augmented reality” game.

I know, it’s a little scary. And most brokers, and darn near all agents, don’t have the in-house talent to master all these platforms. Nor do they have the budget needed to hire a digital agency that does.

What to do?

Here are a few recommendations, from both the advertiser and publisher side of the business.

For advertisers (brokers and agents)

When Google launched Adwords back in 2002, thousands of brokers and agents jumped on the opportunity. After all, who wouldn’t explore performance-based advertising?

The problem was few practitioners had the time or skill necessary to optimize an SEM campaign. Results for many were disappointing.

My point: Pick media you are confident you can execute well in. If your marketing department has a good designer, you may want to focus on display ads. If you have a great headline/call to action writer on your team, SEM may be a good choice. If you or your broker performs well in front of the camera, start syndicating video.

Stick to that which you are capable executing well.

Secondly, for digital media, make sure you think beyond the click. By this I mean where the user is taken when they click on your ad. Whether this is a property detail page or a more conventional landing page, you have to make certain you present the user with something that is clear, consistent in message and look with the ad that got them to click, and loaded with a strong call to action.

If you can’t execute beyond the click, don’t bother.

For publishers

We as publishers – those site owners or media channels that sell advertising to brokers and agents – can also do our share to simplify the advertising ecosystem.

For one, we can offer cross-platform buys. At HomeFinder, we offer national exposure through HomeFinder.com combined with local placement on individual newspaper sites. Brokers and agents like this because it allows them to kill two birds with one stone.

Adwords now has a mobile offering. Several companies are marrying listings syndication with distribution to YouTube.

We are getting there. But we need to move more quickly to offer integrated packages that streamline the process for our advertisers.

Second, publishers should do more to share best practices with their advertisers. Many sales people take a consultative approach with broker and agent clients as far as structuring an ad buy, but I’m talking about something more.

For example, a strong case can be made that any large publisher would do well to hire an in-house marketing specialist available to help clients evaluate creative, craft messaging and optimize landing pages. If that sounds over the top, consider that newspapers sometimes create ads for smaller clients.

Moving forward

We will never again see a world where advertising is straightforward and audiences are concentrated. Our time is one of multiple, often blended, media channels and atomized audiences.

Our aim should be to make that reality more manageable.

If you’d like to have your writing featured on FOREM blog, please email us at futureofrealestate@gmail.com

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The situation for the local real estate section looks grim. AdAge is reporting newspaper ad revenue fell nearly $2 billion in Q3 of 2008.

Even online ad sales are looking miserable.

Newspapers’ online ad sales, where everyone is hoping some part of the future business model resides, accelerated their decline with a 3% drop. Online ad sales slipped 2.4% in the second quarter.

No question that once we’re through this recession (now official) the advertising marketplace will be radically different. And the shakeout won’t be pretty. I don’t believe a business model solely reliant on advertising can survive (see Storms Ahead for Real Estate Sites).

So it’s more pressing than ever for the big publishers and online media sites to start thinking about how they can help the industry.

Over a year ago I wrote about three things newspapers could do to help their bottom lines and also help real estate professionals make the transition online (see 3 Ps – The Future for Real Estate Newspaper Advertising)- it’s more urgent than ever to start thinking about some of them.

Reprinted below:

Providing the Platform

Leverage existing publishing infrastructure to provide agents/brokers with a web presence, but free the database from the design so it is totally customizable (Ubertor) and retain a unique top level URL and easily create single property web sites (RealBird). Agents have complete control of their presentation of these sites but traffic can easily be fed both directions. Make the data exportable so if the agent wants/needs to leave they can.

With control of the source of the listing data, it can then be pulled back to enhance the mothership’s search results. There is an opportunity to up-sell featured listings (Trulia) or even premium placement for the agent’s sites on search results (Zillow). Don’t get greedy either – help agents get these listings elsewhere on the ‘Net too (Point2NLS, vFlyer).

Give the agents a blogging platform (Move.com, ActiveRain) and allow the content to be rolled up into a hyperlocal information source (Outside.In, Localism, YourStreet). Bonus – you can use this approach to find talented writers that can build out into group blogs (RainCityGuide, BloodhoundBlog), e.g. the PI’s Seattle Real Estate Professionals.

Packaging the Right Tools

Give agents the tools they want to get video tours of their properties and connect the agents with the producers (RealEstateShows, WellcomeMat) but don’t confine the distribution to your site – following the listing model, help the agents syndicate those videos out across the web (TubeMogul).

Promoting the Brand

The package should include various levels of self-service advertising network (with CPM, CPC advertising options) – with options to centralize ad buys on other sites as well. The package could also include placement inside an enhanced local service provider directory (MerchantCircle) in the real estate section. And it should give the Realtor the tools they need to manage their online reputations on other local directory destinations (CitySearch, Yelp, etc.) as well.

With this approach, brokers and agents ultimately would benefit from the one-stop-shop for all their marketing needs as well as playing off the paper’s still resilient brand with local real estate consumers.

If they can see this opportunity, the papers are the only ones that (for now) have the local market penetration to pull something like this off. And at each of the step, there are clear and obvious ways that the newspapers could monetize this – far beyond selling simple classifieds ads.

advertising, real estate marketing, real estate 2.0, online media

Flickr photo by eob.

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Microsoft is definitely serious about becoming an advertising play on the web. Their $6 Billion acquistion of aQuantive, an online advertising and marketing company, was just the first in a series of steps they plan on taking in this arena.

MS’ adCenter Labs lies at the heart of a lot of these future initiatives and is a great source of interesting information for marketers – like this Demographics Prediction tool (go to town on your favorite Real Estate 2.0 site) or their Top Search Term Demographical Composition Study (.Docx file).

One nugget; “Female Windows Live Search audiences are more likely to click on mortgage ads, as they generated 59% of the total clicks.”

Who knew?

At their recent Demo Fest, MS unveiled a number of new technologies they are working on. Several of which conceivably have application to real estate.

Air Wave. This technology creates a “fourth screen” experience beyond the TV, PC and mobile phone to enable advertisers to engage consumers outside of the home in public places such as an airport or a shopping mall. By using an interactive, multitouch screen display, consumers can play games or interact with advertisements to receive coupons or product information. With the help of a webcam, they can try on products such as sunglasses virtually. This technology builds on the “large display ads” technology showcased at last year’s Demo Fest.

Contextual Ads for Video. Through speech recognition, this technology enables ads to be dynamically served based on the content discussed in the video. For example, if the topic of the video was gardening, ads related to gardening or lawn improvement could be served in an adjacent text-based ad as the video played. For advertisers, this provides access to consumers while at the point of consideration.Intelligent Bug Ads. This technology balances the interests of advertisers and the target audience by locating nonintrusive frames in a video in which to place ads. By using a computer vision algorithm to calculate the least intrusive spot in the video, it approximates human judgment and places the ad in the video where it is least likely to interfere with the consumer’s viewing experience.

Visual Product Browsing. This tool uses computer vision algorithms to browse and categorize images as a human might, without the need for manual data tagging. Online shoppers could use this technology to visually browse categorized images of products such as lamps and narrow their search to find “more like this” options through physical and visual characteristics such as the product’s height, depth and width. This brings efficiency to photo browsing and enhanced targeting capabilities for advertisers who are trying to better understand user intent and preferences.

Couple some of these products with some of their other undertakings, namely Photosynth (see Next Generation Virtual Tours) and Surface (see Surface Technology Could Save Full Service Brokers), and we could actually (surprise!) see some real innovation coming out of Redmond in the future.

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Thanks to this month’s sponsors!

Real Pro Systems

Real Pro Systems are the minds behind VillageMaker; the first white-labeled social network/blogging platform for real estate professionals. Agents can build referral business by offering past clients, prospects and community members their own private, secure environment to connect and share information and photos with each other.

Check ‘em out and make sure to tell ‘em FOREM sent you.

If you want to reach thousands of daily tech savvy real estate readers, make sure you advertise on the Future of Real Estate Marketing.

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by donmimi83 (mostly away )

In an interesting story from the WSJ.com, RE/MAX is using data from Cox Communications DVRs to track viewer watching patterns and figure out where to place their advertisements.

Using a new process that taps into data from cable set-top boxes, RE/MAX found that, along with home-improvement shows, those households were also likely watching cable channels such as auto-focused Speed, as well as shows including TNT’s “Without a Trace.”

They also merged the viewing pattern data with demographic data in order to segment their audience.

By using viewing data from cable set-top boxes and merging it with information from demographic data companies such as Claritas, the technology can create a general behavioral profile of a viewer. For instance, RE/MAX wanted to reach women 25 years to 54 years old with $75,000 or more annual income and who were in the market to buy or sell a home in the next 12 months.

This sort of precision is already commonplace on the online world — even more precision is available in social networks (see Marketing Yourself with Facebook Flyers) — but it’s interesting to see the same targeting abilities start to move into the offline world too.

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This one is for all the creative types out there. (Warning: Some language is NSFW)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYEf8XZKlUU[/youtube]

(h/t Advertising Ourselves to Death)

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by Simon T

Tech pundit Om Malik writes that the slowdown in the housing sector, and the greater uncertainty in the U.S. economy as a whole, is likely going to have an impact on advertising spending. I’ve been saying the same thing for a while (see What the Subprime Mess Means for Real Estate 2.0) now.

Om quotes a recent report by TNS Media Intelligence that says:

Total advertising expenditures in the first half of 2007 slipped by 0.3 percent to $72.59 billion versus the same period in 2006…

Strangely, August’s Neilsen Netratings report (PDF) of the top 10 Web advertisers also came out this week and it actually shows that three of the four mortgage/financial advertisers on the list (including Countrywide Financial) have increased their spending over last month (PDF).

But does this mean the gloomy prognostications are off base? I don’t think so.

Rather, I suspect that online ad spends in real estate are reaching the top of the curve, with perhaps just a minor boost in spending to counter the bad news last month. According to Internet Outsider, the month-to-month growth in spending by Countrywide, for example, is slowing; from $30 million in June to $35 million in July to $35.4 million in August.

It’s really too early to tell how this trend will play out – but if there is to be any large scale slowdown in spending I’m guessing we’re only at the beginning.

There’s one more factor to consider in all of this.

Malik goes even further in his post to suggest that this impact will be felt most severely at the large portal destinations, whose margins may be being squeezed by growing inventory levels at other destinations.

Social networks and social media sites are creating inventory at a rapid clip, and are one of the main reasons why the CPMs (cost per 1000 impressions) have stalled.

Hypertargeted advertising is the holy grail of online advertising; and social networks and social media can deliver that more accurately than a portal or destination site. Social networks like Facebook deliver authentic consumers, rather than faceless “uniques” and can do so in specific niches. Likewise, blogs can deliver passionated readers rather than random “surfers” – just look at the passionate communities Blown Mortgage, SocketSite and Curbed have built. The final link in this chain are the vertical ad networks like Blogads or Federated Media that are making it easier for big brand advertisers to reach out to these readers.

Finally, as advertisers start to shop around, a glut of inventory means only one thing – lower prices and less profit. Sound familiar? This hardly news to anyone trying to sell a home right now.

So, in a way, the prospects of the big ad-driven Real Estate 2.0 plays (Zillow, Trulia, et al.) could very well mirror what’s happening in the housing market. Money’s coming off the table (buyers are holding back) and profits are getting pushed down (too much inventory on the market). Bad news all around.

I could be wrong in this assessment. Part of me hopes I am.

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Recently, I’ve thinking about tweaking this blog’s advertising strategy (see Blogvertising: The Decision to Add Ads to Your Blog) by bringing new advertisers on board at FOREM and deep-sixing the Google Ads I’ve been running lately. Why? I’m starting to doubt AdSense’s supposed contextual relevance as I’m starting to see more and more truly bizarre ads in the rotation.

It irks me that I exercise no creative control over what ads are shown on my site and the designs of some of the ads served up truly make me cringe. Plus I’ve always wanted to have any advertising on FOREM actually be useful to readers as well (…I guess that’s every publisher’s dream) and highlight great products or services that the industry actually can use. Google Ads, frankly, just can’t deliver that.

Unfortunately, I realized that before I could even begin to approach any potential advertisers, I’m going to need to know a little more about you, the FOREM reader.

So you guessed it, here comes another dreaded Reader Survey.

I need to learn a little more about who you are, how you use this site and what you like and dislike so I can more accurately represent just exactly who it is reading this blog. Of course, this survey is not mandatory — though I would definitely appreciate your help with this.

And because I don’t like wasting anyone’s time, there’s the chance to win a $100 gift certificate from Amazon.com if you do (I’ll randomly draw one name from all completed entries). Rest assured, all personal information gathered will never be shared with any third parties and will only be aggregated together in order to create a representative sample of the FOREM readership.

So whether you’re hitting this site through the homepage or the feeds, click on through and complete the FOREM Reader Survey and help me dump Google for good.

On a similar note, there’s a great read on Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger about how you can Run a Reader Survey on Your Blog too.

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The rush to get content onto computer screens (see WellcomeMat – The Killer App for Real Estate Video) doesn’t mean that there haven’t been significant advance in the way a real estate professional can market themselves on that other small screen, the television.

Google announced today it’s bringing its AdWords advertising platform to television advertising. Partnering with local cable providers, the service will allow the high level cable channels to sell off excess inventory to Google’s network of small budget advertisers, presumably at reduced or at least affordable rates.

Spotzer is another company that is making a play to help smaller advertisers get their messages heard. They provide canned video advertising spots that Realtors can bookend with their logo and contact information as well as a platform to make informed media buys. The site is still in Alpha and is still a little rough around the edges, but the concept is easy enough to imagine working. Prices ranged around $300 for a 15 second spot and a $19500 buy.

Spotrunner, which I’ve written about before (see On the Tube, On The Cheap), has been doing the same thing for a while.

I’ve modified my views on television advertising since that earlier piece; I now believe that when used effectively, especially as a means to push traffic to your web site, it can make sense. Especially as these new services, including whatever Google ends up offering, begin to commoditize it and drive down the price.

But rather than me speaking to the power of television advertising though; I thought it would be appropriate to reprint the words of Sharon Nyman, the Realtor profiled in Money Magazine and my post Success with Spot Runner? – where she kindly left the following advice in the comment section:

1. To the person who said the best way to find buyers is on the internet, I could not agree more. In fact most of my advertising dollars are spent on the internet. Buyers for the Florida Keys come from everywhere. Just three weeks ago, I got a phone call from a buyer who said he was looking at my web site and (if he could get out of Chicago) he would like to meet with me the following day to consult and possibly look at property. He and his wife flew in on Friday, we looked at property on Saturday, they put a contract in on an open water listing of mine and flew back to Chicago on Sunday. As it turns out he is the CEO of one of the nation’s largest investment firms. I tell every seller with whom I consult that no amount of traditional advertising can reach potential buyers like the internet; however, that does not mean I do not do local magazine and newspaper advertising.

2. When I decided to try Spot Runner, I did not expected someone to pick up the phone and say they want to see the listing they just saw on TV. I have now run three Spot Runner campaigns and with each one I have seen an increase in traffic to my web site. Yes, the web site is mentioned only once but my name is my web address and it is mentioned again.

3. Have you ever heard that expression: List to Exist? If an agent has well priced listings that are properly promoted, the buyers will come. So how does an agent get listings? Why would a seller call me? How do I keep my name in front of potential sellers? How do I set myself apart from the hundreds of other agents in our area? Well, I think Spot Runner does that for me and at the same time I might just sell one of the properties advertised. I have had many people in the community mention the TV ads so I know they are working. If Spot Runner helps me get listing appointments or helps me get the listing over a competitor because I do TV advertising, then it has accomplished what I wanted it to.

4. I could have done a spot about all the reasons to work with me but that is not my style. I think advertising a property on TV says it all. Of course I do not run all of my listings. I choose interesting properties and hope potential buyers will go to the web site for more information and find something there that fits their needs and budget.

’nuff said.

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