Trulia Launches Mobile Ads for Real Estate Agents

Real estate listings site Trulia is taking its ads mobile. The site is offering real estate agents a limited number of Zip code-targeted placements in its mobile app and website. The idea is to help local agents reach people when they are checking out neighborhoods and searching for nearby homes for sale on their mobile devices.

“Homebuyers using our mobile app are really at a different stage of the process,” said Stephen Rossi, Trulia’s director of marketing. “They are more likely to seek out a real estate agent and ask for their help,” when they’re visiting a neighborhood they might like to call home.

Display ads featuring agents are aimed based on location, appearing when people search for home listings. They can click to call the agent or fill out a form to get in touch directly through the ad, or click to view listings from the agent. For each Zip code, Trulia offers five ad placements, and agents can purchase one or more of those five chunks of impressions on a monthly basis.

According to Rossi, Trulia experiences a surge in mobile search traffic on the weekends, when people have time to visit places where they’re looking for homes. “Overall we see 30 to 35 percent of our overall search traffic on mobile during the weekends,” he said, noting that during certain hours on weekends “mobile traffic actually exceeds our web traffic.”

The ads are priced according to the popularity of each market; the higher the demand, the higher the ad cost, said Rossi. “Areas more in demand are areas where homes are selling quickly or there are a lot of real estate agents,” he said. The ads include the agent’s photo and contact information.