Pellegrino slams ‘penny-pinching’ competitors, as Domain removes third-party ads
Jason Pellegrino
Domain is removing all third-party, non-property advertising from its platforms, with company president Jason Pellegrino saying those who spend thousands on a real estate listing should not be competing “with ads for credit cards or holidays”.
This move takes effect on December 1, across the Domain, Allhomes, and Commercial Real Estate (CRE) portals, and comes less than three months after the A$3 billion sale of the real estate listings company to Costar Group.
Pellegrino said in a media release that Domain is looking to “raise the standard” for real estate listings sites in Australia.
So essentially, former Managing Director of Google says to remove programmatic ads to “raise the standard” and remove clutter.
Sage advice for other publishers with their multiple, auto-refreshing ad units.
Looking at Homes.com which has no SSP integrations this ‘move’ looks more likely to be a directive from the new owners who ought to realise the US and AU ad markets absolutely are different.
Guess what, REA won’t do the same and it won’t hurt their audience traffic or ads revenue one bit; if anything it’ll increase demand from banking, insurance et al wishing to be adjacent to property intenders. Marketing investment by Real Estate co’s and agency advertisers are in no way related.
My prediction is two years from now Domain will look back at another play that’s resulted in them leaving ad money on the table.