The battle between Zoopla and OnTheMarket continues in full spate, with the former claiming that OTM is struggling with traffic and that its cost per lead is over £50 – making it the “most costly and least effective marketing channel in UK property portal history”.
Zoopla also says it has welcomed back “dozens” of agents who have defected from the new portal.
Citing Hitwise figures, Zoopla says traffic to OTM fell 13.5% in April.
OTM has rubbished the claims.
Zoopla’s full press release says: “With three full months since the launch of OTM and despite some bold predictions and noisy PR, the latest data shows that the new portal is struggling to establish any meaningful audience levels with traffic falling by 13.5% in April, according to independent web monitoring firm Hitwise.
“Even using OTM’s recently released internal data of 3.5m visits in April and 10m visits since launch leads to the same conclusion of falling or static traffic as it implies around 6.5m visits over the first 2 months with little or no growth in April.
“During the period since the launch of OTM, ZPG has enjoyed a monthly average of over 46m visits versus just over 3m for OTM.
“Based on publicly available traffic data, membership rates, inventory levels and average lead conversion rates the average cost per lead for OTM members is currently estimated to be in excess of £50 compared to an average of less than £3 for ZPG members, likely making OTM the most costly and least effective marketing channel in UK property portal history.
“Lawrence Hall of Zoopla Property Group said: ‘OTM has delivered the same audience in three months that ZPG averages in under a week but is charging similar advertising rates. Its members are paying more than 15 times the fair market value for their digital marketing currently which is simply not sustainable for most.
‘Property portal fees must align with exposure and enquiries and no business can afford to be paying way over the odds for under performance for an extended period of time.’
“OTM needs to grow its audience very substantially and quickly to get anywhere near their prediction of catching ZPG by the end of the year and the latest data from both Hitwise and OTM itself shows that this is simply not realistic. In the meantime, charging its members a more realistic rate of around £20 per month, as ZPG did when its traffic was at similar levels, would seem fairer whilst they try to build their audience.
“We have already welcomed back dozens of members who have already become disillusioned by the unrealistic promises made and fees they are being charged and we will continue to welcome back any other agents who are interested in ensuring they are getting the best value for their marketing spend.”
Ian Springett, chief executive of OTM, said: “Another week and yet another inaccurate and speculative press release from Zoopla.
“It is a fact that less than 10% of the agent members of OTM have chosen Zoopla as their other portal. And it is a fact that the Hitwise figure showing a reduction in traffic of 13.5% in April is wrong.
“OTM and Zoopla both use the same performance measurement tool, Google Analytics, for external reporting and it is a fact that far from declining, the traffic to OTM has continued to increase month on month since its launch in January 2015.
“Furthermore, it is a fact that traffic levels have remained buoyant in May to the extent that OTM has just experienced its highest ever number of weekly visits.
“To date, our users have viewed an average of 9.3 pages and spent an average of 6.5 minutes per visit – figures which compare well with other major portals.
“With membership now at more than 5,000 offices and growing every day and with more than 27% per cent of member offices uploading their properties to OTM ahead of any other portal, OTM is already a must-view website for the key audience of serious property-seekers.
“Members continue to tell us that leaving Zoopla has made no difference to their instruction-winning capability and that they are receiving at least as many good quality leads from their overall online presence as before. They report that the property-seekers they talk to are enjoying the clear and elegant search experience and the faster response times offered by OTM while vendors and landlords appreciate the quality of presentation of their properties and the absence of spurious and unhelpful data and distracting advertising around them.
“OTM is owned and supported by thousands of estate and lettings agents via Agents’ Mutual. In attacking it by the issue of misleading information, Zoopla has shown how little it understands the strategic motivation and commitment of those agents to creating a superior market-leading property search service.
“Zoopla should be in no doubt: OTM is here to stay and we remain confident in becoming the number two portal by the end of January 2016 on our way to achieving our medium term objective of challenging the market leader.”
Comments (48)
There is really no way to compare these 2 businesses (OTM & Z)
If you want a large company to handle something then you get a worse quality of service (e.g. Wetherspoons pubs). Zoopla are interested in a huge database of companies to advertise to the masses. This is why we all have to (or did have to) deal with all substandard the leads and enquiries from Zoopla. But I don’t mind doing that, we are a small local firm and everytime we talk to someone they will remember us. Zoopla gives us the leads we need to do this.
From what I’ve heard OTM wouldn’t deliver the same quantity (Yes, I want quantity and I don’t mind if some are poor) – this may or may not be true
On the other hand OTM have very dedicated agents and the leads that are coming through are “fantastic” (although that’s hard to believe in every case)
If all agents are singing from the same hymn sheet and in the same tune then their leads are always going to be better quality. OTM has that Z doesn’t.
What makes Zoopla No. 2? what are the criteria that we all decide Z is number 2? is it visitor numbers?, properties?, enquiries? could it be that they are only number 2 for the fact that we think they are.
So we have all decided that Z are number 2, what do OTM need to get to number 2? because if it is stock then in Jan 2016 springett could announce they have over 1/2 the agencies on their books that they are number 2 but even then the visitor numbers could be poor. I wouldn’t class OTM at number 2 until it has beaten Zoopla on more than half the attributes used to measure the portals worth to us agents.
I don’t think even Springett knows which facts he is going to have to manipulate/quote in January ’16 to announce its No. 2 portal status.
Ciao
So.. let me get this straight…
This “Zoopla” thingymajig is an INTERNET company, yes?
These are the people who claim that 161% of all property searches START on the internet – another yes?
Okay – would someone then please explain to me why they feel that they have to plaster themselves over buses, cabs, television and now billboards in order to get people’s attention (of sorts)?
Oh – not forgetting kicking off a frankly tedious weekly b!tchslapping with OTM in best “I’ll thkweam and thkweam until I’m thick” fashion to get themselves a few extra column inches as well, of course…
“Okay – would someone then please explain to me why they feel that they have to plaster themselves over buses, cabs, television and now billboards in order to get people’s attention (of sorts)?”
A very good point PeeBee, also not to forget a non stop radio campaign in my area since January along with some bonkers campaigns such as ‘Zooplafied’ and it’s pretty clear who Z are aiming their advertising at. They are hoping that agents will give in under the constant bombardment, yet only ‘dozens’ have apparently left.
OTM on the other hand have put all their spend into online as well as the tv campaign. With the online spend/presence intensified in the last few weeks.
From where I’m sitting OTM’s spend is being aimed towards the consumer, Z towards agents. In the long term I still only see one winner especially if Z have front loaded their spend into the first 6-8 months of this year!
PeeBee – is it not just about keeping the brand in the public eye, the same as we use branding on our own boards – not just to show properties for sale but for brand awareness and making us one of the 3 agents people will contact when requiring an FMA? Likewise Zoopla/RM/OTM/Purplse Bricks adverts on the TV. Basic marketing, isn’t it?
Hi JAM01. You ask “is it not just about keeping the brand in the public eye…” – it very well may be – but then that bu99ers the portals’ entire offering, which is based upon the claim that THE INTERNET is where it starts.
Tell you what makes me laugh – when some clever bod comes out with some pearl along the lines of “I never advertise in the papers – it doesn’t work”. There is only one certainty – and that is if you don’t do something, then you can not get a response from it.
Innit funny that every Thursday/Friday, we get a spike in the internet hits – on the properties we advertise that week. What about you?
Agents are paying pawns to bigger players in the media business. Sad for agents and consumers.
Says commrade Kasparov
Oh, dear, Mr Quirk… you are SO bitter that OTM wouldn’t let you advertise on the site that you turn on ‘Tantrum Mode’ every time you see a story.
To us who know what you are trying to achieve it’s laughable – but in your constant craving for column inches you forget that without the internet YOUR COMPANY CEASES TO EXIST. You have built your entire (albeit puny… and now having more ‘chiefs than indians’) empire on the back of access to the portals that traditional Agents have fed and grown to make your very existence possible. Which is why, no doubt, you were so keen to jump on yet another bandwagon in the first place and so keen now to publicly spit your dummy whenever you see the name of the company that simply didn’t want your business.
Awww… diddums. You go on – thkweam and thkweam until you’re thick… if that’ll make you feel better.
I really have to agree with the last comment from RealAgent – the majority of leads from Z are very poor. We have twice in recent months had to complain to Z about the silly number of enquiries we receive for rentals in Central London for £400pcm (inc bills)! Sift through the rubbish Z send through – £50 per lead is a bargain compared to Z!
For me this decision is really easy. One of my offices that was really struggling last year has seen its average house price leap up by close to £75,000 and in fairness, it did have a poor year last year, but has already done 70% of what it did in the whole of 2014. Nothing has changed EXCEPT joining OTM. The estate agents as opposed to the reps on this site KNOW that the market we are in at present doesn’t require more buyer enquiries, it requires instructions and OTM seems to have struck a chord with sellers. Sure conditions change and there may come a time where buyer enquiries are the priority, but that isn’t now. Besides even if it was, Z for us only ever brought in low grade enquiries in any case.
Glad the office improved RA, Nothing may have changed but the market has and i bet you had some strong words with the manager at the turn of the year 😉
I cant see how OTM would increase business unless you were never on RM in the first place.
Morning SP, yes all of those things and my other offices have increased business too, but I am impartial enough to accept that it is probably market conditions as much as anything else with those offices. This change in one though is dramatic, in fact there is another office that has as increased a fair bit as well and the only thing they both have in common is a greater percentage of higher value properties in their areas; they have both taken on a few more that 2014, but the increase in revenue is because of the higher numbers of instructions at the higher values.
I have no evidence it’s OTM of course, but I will let others worry about that; what I do know is that as part of the pitch to would be sellers it’s included and at least two of my offices have found it an extremely good tool for getting those higher value properties.
Zoopla here talk about value, but if someone had said to me last year that I could pay no more than I was paying for Z, but would get a better percentage of the higher priced market I would have taken it. That appears to have been exactly what has happened.
Sounds like you are unsure as to how your increase in trade has occurred within the business RealAgent. I am a bit surprised at this to be honest. Are the MA bookers not asking about where the business is coming from at the point of booking the FMA? On then will you know where to concentrate future resources to increase FMA booking further. If it is then because of OTM – great. But I bet it is more to do with local board presence and canvassing?
Springett and Miliband the perfect combination!
You need to explain that post! as afar as I can see one is a bloke who never achieved anything and quit as soon as the fight got a bit tough, the other built Primelocation and pulled together a powerful affinity group of 25% of the industry and hasn’t quit despite being the sole focus of every bit of Anti Agents Mutual, OTM rhetoric.
And it rumbles on!
I think the one thing that has come out of this is it really does not matter if you are on Z or OTM – Both sets of agents are happy.
And RM continue to outperform every portal by about 8 -1 Leads and the quality is there.
For that reason i think we all may as well only use 1 portal and unfortunately that portal is RM 🙁
I am the only one measuring OTM in this way……..
In my villages, we see NO agent who is a RM/Z agent gaining ANY market share, in fact they are losing market share on the whole with all of the RM/OTM agents doing well and pulling away.
I do not really care how many hits either of these sites get, certainly not the 46m visit rubbish! (I mean silly numbers to quote on valuations, they believe you more when you tell them there are 5 to 15 quality matches perhaps!
My only concerned would be if “sellers” (anyone remember them in your business model?) were choosing RM/Z agents over RM/OTM agents, but this is clearly not the case.
So basically for me, no business being lost, which was the claim of many on here were saying (well hoping) that OTM agents would lose business and market share whilst they mopped up the business. I watched hoping this would not be true and it was not, 2 week storm with **** touting letters from the Corps and then storm over….. business as usual.
To level this out, OTM do need to think how they can convince the remainder of the agents to join though! As if this is the lot then perhaps RQ is right and a #fail is 4 years or so away….. SO perhaps OTM show the fence sitters (if you can) that the OTM agents are increasing their market shares in listings (remembering that is what it is ALL about) and that dropping Z did not stop their new business levels….. this was or I assume is the fear from most…. will people stop using me? Well “no” even dropping Z and NOT joining OTM will not effect you.
I will add OTM has done its job for me already! We managed to tell RM what we wanted to pay and they listened! New contract signed on my terms.
For me OTM would do well to see what the Stock level increases are like compared to Z (may be difficult with Z have more agents) but New Business levels for me would paint a better picture for me, as NEW BUSINESS is what we are all after!
OTM will be lucky to rival Prime Location let alone Zoopla, good luck flogging that dead horse.
If the number of leads being generated per agent were anything like adequate, Springett would have surely crowed about that in his response. It’s telling that all he can talk about in reply are page visits, time on site and membership numbers, the latter which has hardly moved since OTM launched four months ago and despite spending all their members’ money on a ‘big’ TV campaign. #fail
Russell Quirk – ‘The Voice of Agency’, ‘The One They Call King’, ‘The Big Daddy of Agency’, ‘The Champ’, ‘Prime Minister Quirk’… The list is endless.
Your words are the equivalent of those written in the bible. What a load of tosh you spout.
If I ask you some questions will you hang around to answer them Mr Quirk?
If you are going to be busy today fair enough, I understand but at some time I really would like an open up a debate about the vulnerability of central office area rep (COAR) agency which I see as distinctly different to local traditional without office agency (LTWO), how central office agency is wholly reliant on a strong and popular portals and how LTWO agency isn’t
Agent’s Mutual has two element; it’s portal and it’s power. If there was a competitive SAAS domain knowledge within AM to compliment its portal domain knowledge it would have no difficulty at all silencing Mr Hall’s scratched vinyl.
It is obviously Mr Hall is tasked with rebuilding subscriptions but this smacks of desperation now, repeating a worthwhile message is a must, repeating rubbish is just daft.
It’s weird how OTM is never willing to give any specifics about site visits – this time just saying that they use Google Analytics and that it’s increasing month on month – but they do get very specific with number of page views and length of time on the site because they compare well with other portals.
Why would that be?
Errr they don’t need to!
Site visit are an irrelevance, a nothing, a red herring. Site visits are like the proverbial Monty Python Parrot; they are an ex-marketing feature.
Now agents have their own portal and can get a straight answer to a straight question, they don’t have to rely on or listen to a rep or marketing executives making up facts designed to mislead. The king is naked an ¼ of the industry can see it.
Agents mutual have about 350,000 vendors about 1.25 million applicants including 350,000 they know an awful lot about. That is enough for any agency to be getting on with.
Site visits are an irrelevance?
You are certainly an estate agent…
Actually I used to be, I am not now.
Without wanting to sound rude I explained why site visits are irrelevant, the people AM need to know about to sell the stock they have are already known to them.
I have a strong domain knowledge of estate agency, lettings and property management, I have 21 years as a technology service provider that goes back to DOS2 so have seen every development of digital for Agency, if I claim site views are a nonsense it is up to a digital expert to prove they are not.
The digital experts put up an impressive show of words when they think they can be condescending towards a luddite agents but none has yet shown the correlation of site visit to property sales, until they do site visits mean nothing, they are just a number, as the AM agents can now see.
The OTM site views are comparatively on the floor yet AM agents are selling, Zoopla is boasting huge numbers but there is no evidence to show that their member agents sales are proportionality as huge as the apparent gap between visits to the respective sites. That alone makes my point.
To back up RM (Robert, not Rightmove!) site visits do indeed mean diddly squat unless you also include data on bounce rate, conversion and WHAT people are interacting with and HOW they do it, along with WHERE they come from.
Our website gets loads of hits, but that doesn’t mean every hit is a paying customer. Some are students in Russia learning english, some are other agents, some are people who clicked a link by mistake – you can say anything with half a data set, and people will believe you.
Rightmove vs Zoopla vs OTM ……… my opinion? *yawn* wake me up when it’s over.
Quickbrit
Rather than use loads of technobabble allow me to explain “site visits” and their relevance in a slightly different way.
Imagine you own a motorway café. You have 73,500 cars pass your café in any 24-hour period – WOW!! – look how popular your café is, seen by all those people in their cars!
Thing is – of those 73,500 passing cars, 250 of them actually stop in the car park and enter the café.
Of those 250 ‘stoppers’, 100 of them walk straight to the loo… and then leave without sitting down at a table and ordering anything.
The 150 others actually buy something. Maybe only a packet of mints (guilt is a wonderful thing, innit?) – or maybe as much as a buttie and a cuppa.
FIGURES mean squat.
If I owned that motorway café I would hang a big sign outside saying “Only Toilets for the next 30 miles” and “Free Toilet facilities” however once they have locked the door in the WC cubicle and finished their bit, I would make them pay £10 to release the locked catch or the stay in their and pay £1 for every extra minute they chose not to pay.
They could however pay just £5 to get out of the locked cubicle IF they buy £12 worth of goodies on the way out.
“there” not “their” sorry! too excited about what I thought was very funny post! well I’m laughing anyway 🙂
Paul – if their leads are going up on a daily basis, that means you must be getting at least 18 leads a day.
Given that a guy I spoke to last week has had 4 leads since it launched, I find your claim astonishing.
I’m happy for the thing to rumble on. I reckon I’m getting an extra 1 in 10 instructions from it. Most don’t care, but some do – especially landlords who are pretty receptive once they understand what’s going on.
“I’m happy for this thing to rumble on”…Me too I’m more than happy with my investment.
Paul. I represent a Nigerian company executive who is trying to get his $28m fortune out of the country. For a small administration fee he is willing to give you a large percentage of this cash for helping him.
Just send me your full name, credit card number, cvv number and mothers maiden name along with a cheque for £10000.
Kind regards
J
“I represent a Nigerian investment company”…”so just send me your full name……”
So you just want me for my data sounds like your a Rep for the duopoly.
Paul do a site specific search for “The Outsider” and you will be able to narrow it down a bit further. All but two posts scream who J works for!
If you can guess who I work for Robert, ill buy you lunch and let you try and convince me that OTM is a valuable investment.
I have already guessed [ not saying, there is no need to. I have a fair idea how you will post per a given subject and respect you for your viewpoint] I wouldn’t take a lunch off you on the grounds that I think AM is the valuable bit and OTM isn’t. OTM is nice does what it is designed to do but it is the wrong product to do what it is attempting to do for everyone it ought to be available to.
The value (to agents) of OTM is the experience and education of the digital environment, the terminology and the challenges. Those that stick with the education process rather than dropping out will be stronger for the experience. They will learn to leave it to others but have a better understanding of who they should use and why if, after 5 years, that turns out to be ( or not be) Ian Springett will only be known then.
There is so much more to AM and OTM than page views but it is seemingly the only thing digital have to fight with. The fact Mr Hall is repeating this attack shows he has a very limited view of what is being played out.
If you want to buy me lunch and find out an alternative viewpoint to you own and of OTM I would gladly accept; from your posts on here it would be a long lunch. I would certainly enjoy it.
I’m a million % confident I can guess who you work for….and I’m starving!
J might be be about to buy 5000 lunches but I suspect that isn’t a problem.
Feeding the 5000? I’ve been called many things before but Jesus isn’t one of them.
Top trumps! I’ll bring the fish!
There’s always an open offer for me to get you something more appetising than your usual air sandwich Barett.
“Furthermore OTM have just experienced it’s highest number of weekly visits in May”.
Whatever OTM are doing is working, as the number of leads received in May is going up on a daily basis.