Baldies' Comb Brawl

As you can probably tell, I’m an avid reader of the three daily property news websites here in the UK, Negotiator, Property Industry Eye and Estate Agent Today.

But I don’t think I’ve ever seen something quite so amusing as the juxtaposition of these portal adverts and stories in this morning’s Property Industry Eye newsletter:

Quick recap:

OnTheMarket had a big advertising push in September last year, one of the busiest months in the property calendar and – on OTM’s dashboard at least – overtook Zoopla in terms of traffic. OTM then blanket-advertised that it was the number two portal, now.

Zoopla took exception to this and, in a rare public intervention, its CEO Charlie Bryant released a PR statement complaining about OTM’s tactics. Clearly he remained furious for long enough to send a strong letter to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) too. It’s taken a while but now the ASA has ruled that OTM should +not+ have been so slapdash in its claiming of the second spot and it must not do it again. Cue Zoopla’s victory lap in the news today.

But what’s this? Right alongside Zoopla’s crowing story is an advert for OTM stating that agents think that site is better value for money!

And below that? One from Zoopla itself saying that +consumers+ prefer it to OTM!!

A reminder how advertising works – you pay thousands of pounds of your hard-earned revenue, from clients, to create and distribute a message that you hope will win more.

So these two sites are throwing huge amounts of money (and time, from CEOs to Marketing Teams) at each other to try and win a battle for – checks notes – second place in a race.

They aren’t even bothering to go after the market leader, Rightmove – in fact, to really show how much they’ve lost sight of what’s important here, they actually advertise Rightmove’s name in their ads as well! (And Zoopla openly admits that sellers prefer RM to itself, in an advert that it’s paying for!!!)

Sheesh.

And then, of course, in the same newsletter we have the stealth story from Rightmove, showing an absolute disregard for anything the other two are doing. It’s simply talking about how it’s running a multi-zillion pound ad campaign again, same creative as last year, because it’s not wasting money on agents. Not mentioning anyone else. Just a timely reminder that it’s the Big Dog.

Here’s a plea to Zoopla and OTM: please, please join up. Stop wasting your (and agents’) money fighting each other over the title of ‘Best Also-Ran’ and use that to battle Rightmove instead.

Last week RM confidently told the City that it’s on course to increase revenues by 10%, 4x the rate of inflation. That’s coming from one core source – estate and letting agents’ hard graft.

We need serious competition with Rightmove in this industry, not two bald portals fighting each other over a second-rate comb. It’s time for something different, I guess.

Let the alternative ‘Rightmove Resistance’ commence.