So I found this interesting tidbit at the end of last week. Move, Inc., the parent company of Realtor.com has taken over ad sales for the site BlockShopper.com. This begged the question to me, is Move trying to become the next Doubleclick / Google AdWords?
It seems that this would be a fairly profitable business since Move can sell the Blockshopper ad inventory to the same set of customers it currently has… One item that’s important to Blockshopper is their hyperlocal nature.
Since Move already sells spots down to a city / zip code level to Realtors with their community spotlight program. The question is will Move charge extra for this program since they will now appear on BlockShopper, or will Move sell it as a feature to help them provide more value to the Realtors and vendors that buy these local targeted ads? OR will Move just be a salesforce that sells ads to those interested on behalf of BlockShopper? Will they not be pushing any of their own current ad inventory purchasers to the service?
If they do begin pushing the BlockShoppper ads, do you see Realtors continuing to want to work with Move? We’ve heard from numerous agents over the past year that working with the company is a “necessary evil.”
As part of the agreement, Move becomes the exclusive national sales force for all real estate advertisers on BlockShopper and will syndicate Move ad products on BlockShopper.com for agents interested in reaching local buyers and sellers. Agents purchasing community-based ad products on BlockShopper will soon be supported by Moves rapid response Customer Care team that handled over 1.4 million calls in thousands of communities last year.
