Social Media: Influencer of the Ages

Page Vol. 12. No. 22r1 Classified Intelligence Report

Consulting Services for Interactive Media and Classified Advertising Vol. 12 No. 22r2 Nov. 30, 2011

SPECIAL REPORT Social media: Influencer of the ages

BY PETER M. ZOLLMAN

Social media are everywhere. And that certainly includes classifieds. “Tweet this listing” and “Post to Facebook” buttons on classified sites or listings are de rigeur at this point (although we’re astonished by the number of sites that still don’t offer them). And “email to a friend” is just about a must on every listing. But there’s much more. Ad publishers of all stripes use social media to engage with their advertisers. Auto- Trader.co.uk has built some upgrades based on feedback from its dealer pages. The San Die- go Union-Tribune has a LinkedIn Group that talks about the business of its classified sec- tions, where Brandy Luscalzo-Stemen, the company’s “emerging media product manager,” talks about the importance of coupons and QR codes; asks for advertiser comments on what they want from the newspaper and its online classifieds, and reviewed the redesign of the UTClassifieds.com site. Sales reps, and even publisher executives, follow key clients and prospects through Facebook and Twitter. It’s a great lead-generation tool, as well as a way to better understand advertisers’ and prospects needs and promotions. D ECEMBER I SSUE Cars.com offers its users the opportunity to review auto Our last issue of 2011 dealers — an option that made a lot of dealers nervous, as they is a focus on 2012 trends feared the inevitable negative review from an unhappy customer. in recruitment advertis- At the Winnipeg Free Press Facebook page, you can place ing. We only publish one an ad without ever going to the newspaper’s home page, issue in December. Be www.winnipegfreepress.com. The most recent 15 listings from the sure to look for it in your paper’s “marketplace” are shown on the Facebook page. inbox mid-month. AdPay, AdPerfect, Adicio and other vendors all provide social media integration on their respective platforms. And it works. Traffic to the AIM Group’s recruitment site, AIMGroup.com/jobs, increased five-fold after Adicio integrated social media functions into the software in early 2011. “It’s got great appeal, especially for younger job-seekers,” said Tony Lee, EVP of Adicio. “They can come to a site and apply for jobs using their Facebook and LinkedIn accounts. You can do all sorts of cool social-media stuff to get the word out about jobs.” After Adicio launched the ability for candidates to apply for jobs using their Face- book and LinkedIn profiles, its average newspaper client receives more than 220 Facebook and 12 LinkedIn registrations per month, with some newspapers averaging more than 1,000

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classified intelligence report More of our coverage on social classifieds We’ve covered a wide range of “social media and Peter M. Zollman, founding principal, executive editor classifieds” topics during the past year, both in CIR and [email protected] on AIMGroup.com. We’d hate it if you thought today’s Jim Townsend, report was all we did. So here’s a long list of links to ar- principal, editorial director ticles on AIMGroup.com. (There are others; this is just a [email protected] Bruce Annan, sampling.) senior consultant Automotive: A tool for promoting “fresh trade-ins” [email protected] on Facebook: aimgroup.com/blog/2011/11/16/auto- Katja Riefler, director EMEA fresh-trades-on-facebook/ [email protected] Real estate: Facebook and Zillow: aimgroup.com/ Emma Sorensen, director Pacific [email protected] blog/2011/11/10/facebook-boosts-zillow-contest- Neil Skene, associate publisher marketing/ Shannon Kinney, senior consultant Recruitment: Lots of stats and socially focused em- Mark Whittaker, ployer sites offering best practices: aimgroup.com/ sales director, senior analyst [email protected] blog/2011/11/02/the-recruiting-conference-2011-social- Tonya Ratajczak, sales media-focus/#more-13589 [email protected] Recruitment: U.S. Department of Labor joins forces Carla Reyes, client-services manager with Facebook: aimgroup.com/blog/2011/10/20/ [email protected] department-of-labor-facebook-in-jobs-initiative/ Sharon Hill, senior analyst, North America Christoffel Volschenk, senior analyst, Europe General classifieds: Socialisting: aimgroup.com/ David LaFontaine, Latin America blog/2011/06/07/friendly-buying-selling-via-socialisting/ Janine Warner, Latin America and aimgroup.com/blog/2011/08/24/socialisting-adds- Cristina de Barros Costa, Germany/Spain/ email-alerts/ Portugal Brian Blum, Israel Real estate: Housetipper: aimgroup.com/ Talal Abu Issa, Jordan blog/2011/08/01/housetipper-com-social-real-estate- Linda Karlsson, Germany/Scandinavia deals/ Gerard Esteve, France Real estate: Facebook rental reviews from For- Alessandra Ritondo, Italy Rent.com: aimgroup.com/blog/2011/07/01/facebook- Steve Shipside, U.K./France Don Gasper, Hong Kong rental-reviews-from-forrent-com/ Nirmalya Sen, India General classifieds: Tweeting about classifieds on EBay: aimgroup.com/blog/2011/05/25/tweeting-about- Published twice monthly, except once in Decem- classifieds-the-ebay-way/ - ber, by the Advanced Interactive Media Group LLC © 2011 General classifieds: One of our first posts about Fa- cebook Marketplace from Oodle: aimgroup.com/ This publication may not be reproduced in blog/2011/04/28/friend-of-friend-salefacebook- any form, in whole or in part, except by marketplace/ licensed clients. From time to time, Classified Intelligence Report and our writers cover compa- General classifieds: EBay reports on social classi- nies that are clients of the AIM Group. We make fieds : aimgroup.com/blog/2011/03/15/ebay-classifieds- every effort to ensure that our editorial content is objective and is not compromised by any client reports-on-glocal-trade/ relationships. Automotive: AutoTrader.com is focusing on women 402 Spring Valley Road with a social media program: aimgroup.com/ Altamonte Springs, Fla. 32714 blog/2010/11/18/autotrader-coms-female-focused-social 407-788-2780 -success/ Fax 407-788-7061

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registrations per month. In real estate, the average site generates 52 Facebook “likes” per month, while Adicio automotive sites register about six Facebook likes each month. (As you might expect, because LinkedIn is primarily used for job networking, LinkedIn registrations in those categories are negligible.) Tweeting jobs is a popular distribution method; in fact, AdPerfect announced a tie-in this week with TweetMyJobs.com, one of the leading Twitter-focused recruitment tools. (More about others below.) AdPerfect said it would integrate TweetMyJobs with its self- service ad entry tool to “take advantage of the effective distribution and targeting that TweetMyJobs has across the social networks.” Most of the vendors offer back-end tools so their clients, the publishers, can in turn report results to their clients, the advertisers, or give those advertisers direct access to the social media activity involving their ads. At The San Diego Union-Tribune, which uses AdPay for some of its software, Luscalzo- Stemen says they do “tons with social, [including] a Facebook page, to host pet contests and showcase cars under $5,000 as well as other promotions. … We also have several Twitter accounts; the one with the most followers is @sandiegotopjobs.” Here are just a handful of examples of social media integration into classifieds. There are thousands more, but these are a few that caught our eye:

● UsedEverywhere: The Price Is Right, and more

UsedEverywhere, the Canadian classified site that’s trying to compete with Kijiji by offering more than 50 local URLs, is doing so many things right in social media that we don’t know where to start. But we’ll highlight just a few of its initiatives, starting with the coolest one by far. It’s so simple, and even obvious, that we’re surprised more sites haven't jumped on this bandwagon: The Price Is Right is a television game show that originated in the U.S. 55 years ago. It’s really just an extended commercial, as contestants guess to see how close they can come to the price of a wide range of products and trips. How would that work on a site selling “stuff?” (And much more … .) Simply, it works well. And it’s a social driver of engagement that brings users to specific items to guess the price. Guess too high, and you get a smart-aleck response, like “Way off! You’re going to lose some money.” Guess low and you get a different smart- aleck response, like “If you can buy it for that price, see if they’ll throw in the good china, too.”

It’s all in good fun, and it’s been driving traffic to the site consistently since it was launched about six weeks ago. “People have been enjoying it,” said Jody Epp, director of sales and marketing for UsedEverywhere. “We’re starting to get more and more non-UsedEverywhere users trying it, which is obviously the test we’re looking for.” The game is available in all 50 of the Canadian markets where UsedEverywherehas a presence, along with the 14 U.K. markets where it has launched. Participants receive points for their guesses, but they’re essentially worthless, at least temporarily. “Points are just good for bragging rights right now, but our plan is to im- plement some sort of commerce integration, or some sort of point redemption system, where they could be used for upgraded ads, featured ads or some sort of ‘badges’ that users get.” (Want to look at the pricing game? Or play along? You’ll have to “like” UsedEvery- where on Facebook, but it’s a fun game. Try it!) UsedEverywhere has also joined the “daily deals” field with a twist. Instead of building a large email list to send out daily deals — which UsedEverywhere GM Tish Hill describes as “the daily delete” — the site has been promoting its daily deals without email at all. The site puts the daily deal at the top right-hand side of its home page, and promotes it only through social media — primarily the UsedEverywhere Facebook page, and Twitter and LinkedIn. So far, the daily deal is only offered in one market, on UsedVictoria.com, in Victoria, B.C. About 30 have been offered, and Epp said five or six of those were sellouts — including the launch day, which sold out in just 47 minutes, even after some minor technical difficul- ties. Deals are strictly local, and instead of charging a commission the site charges a flat $400. Deals are limited to 250 or fewer, and the company generated $10,000 in revenue during the first six weeks. “Our first and foremost goal is to ensure that the client gets its money back,” said Epp,“because then all the other marketing value and buzz they get from the deal comes at no expense.” Advertisers have received at least 1.5 million and as many as 2.4 million impressions when advertising their deals. Sales reps in other markets where Black Press, owner of UsedEverywhere operates, are “chomping at the bit” to sell daily deals, but Hill said the site is trying to fine-tune the model and build response first. Surprisingly, Epp said, one thing UsedEverywhere is doing is adding email notifications because “we’ve had a lot of people give us feedback that they want emails.” Hill said the business, which is “quite profitable” with about 30 employees and con- tractors, recently closed its small Australia operations but is seeing fast growth in the U.K., where social media participation on UsedEverywhere recently surpassed that in Canada. As UsedEverywhere evolves, Hill said it will move away more and more from being a traditional site and will focus on engaging users socially so it can compete successfully with Kijiji (the EBay-owned category-killer in Canada), Craigslist (which is especially strong in Vancouver), and other well-known classified sites. “We’re no longer in the ‘classifieds’ field,” she said. “We’ve basically moved over to a social-commerce platform, which is where we believe things are moving. And we’re going to be there.”

Tweeting job listings is a fairly common way to distribute them, with TweetAJob.com and TweetMyJobs.com both offering various services among many other similar sites. But what The Washington Post is doing has a few twists. The Post offers 48 separate Twitter feeds, sending out every job listing it receives from employers. (We first wrote about it in CIR 11.11, June 10, 2010.) Each of the feeds has about 100 users, and the Tweets are provided as a service without any additional cost for the duration of the listing. “Tweeting jobs is a turnkey product that allows us (and employers) to reach an audience that might not otherwise access our listings online,” Beth Diaz, director of digital product development at the Post, told us in an email interview. “Employers have been pleased with our listings, and this is just another way we engage active job-seekers.” The Post is able to track the number of retweets each job gets, and “[we] encourage employers do to the same,” Diaz said. The Twitter accounts follow similar formats, and can be found on a single page that explains them all. DCsalesjobs, for example, says “follow us to find sales jobs in the DC Metro area,” while WashPostJobs — one of nine featured employers — offers jobs at the Post company itself. Other categories include media, HR, public relations, part- time jobs, 10 different varieties of technology and engineering jobs, and social-media jobs. Even though the Post has been offering job Tweets for more than a year, Diaz said, “the feeds are still generating interest.” (The Post, of course, is one of hundreds or thousands of recruitment sites that distribute their job listings via Twitter; we wouldn't want to imply otherwise. One more example: @sandiegotopjobs from The San Diego Union-Tribune.)

● AutoTrader.co.uk lets customers comment

Let your advertisers tell you what you want. Sounds so easy, but it doesn’t always happen that way. At AutoTrader.co.uk, the Dealer Desktop and Dealer Community tools are providing comments that have led to product improvements, including changes to the site’s free ad software, a “part exchange assistant,” and improvements to a tool that lets dealers check their ad performance. “It has been great on a number of levels,” Tracey Green, who heads the Dealer Desk- top product, told New Media Age. “It has certainly been great at increasing loyalty and gen-

erating more enthusiasm for our products. “It is satisfying to get feedback straight away, and when we launch to dealers it is taken with open arms because we’ve created a culture of collaboration.”

● AutoTrader.com friendly with Facebook

At AutoTrader.com, 5 percent of all traffic comes not from, but on, Facebook. Users don’t have to go to AutoTrader.com any longer — they can search on the site’s Facebook page with features like make, model, body style, year and price range. While they’re still on Facebook, they can view results of their search. Only if they click on a specific car do they go to AutoTrader.com directly. “This is a really rich environment to try new ways and innovative ways to reach our consumers,” Chip Perry, CEO of AutoTrader.com, told AutoRemarketing.com. “We want to offer our dealers the opportunity to reach a broader base of consumers through Facebook. “Social media and the Internet as a whole [are] an influencing medium [used by] consumers [who] rely on their family and friends for advice on many things, including what their next car should be.” AutoTrader.com also offers a “Connections Bundle” of social media services for dealers, including a chat function for conversations with clients; dealer ratings that allow dealers to display independent reviews chosen by the dealer; “social connections” links for Face- book and Twitter and a site link tool to improve the dealer’s website link on a vehicle listing page.

● Cars.com users review their dealers

There’s absolutely nothing new or unique about user reviews of businesses, but it’s a little less ordinary when a site specifically encourages reviews of its advertisers — car dealers, real estate agents or the like. But Cars.com has stepped over that line, encouraging service users and used- and new-car buyers to post their opinions of dealers. It took a bit of a leap of faith. After all, how valuable is it to include reviews without a few negative ones? If they’re all positive, they’re useless. So Cars.com had to convince its dealers that even when a user is unhappy, there’s value in the review. “When I talk to dealers I tell them not to think of a less-than-positive review as negative, but rather as critical,” Nick Hummer, Cars.com director of product, told us. (See CIR 12.06, March 25.) “If there are two competitive dealers and one has a 5.0 rating and the other a 4.7, the latter is the more believable to the consumer. It’s just realistic to have a couple of reviews that aren’t perfect. It lends credibility.”

● Jobsite.co.uk targets connections

Jobsite.co.uk is using social targeting from a vendor, RadiumOne, to “identify consumers that are aligned with its brand … and attract new candidates it was previously unable to reach.” The company rolled out the targeting project in October, after a successful trial. The system uses a rewards program, mobile tools and video to target specific users and also tar-

get those users’ relevant connections, the company said. “It’s exciting to trial pioneering technology to reach new and existing job candidates,” Katy Stanton, Jobsite’s digital acquisition manager, said in the news release. “The ability to reach new audiences … and manage multiple activity … will be hugely valuable, and we look forward to seeing the results at the end of the eight-week campaign.”

What should you be doing?

It’s great to show best-practice examples, but it’s important too to tell you, our clients, what you need to be doing. As we mentioned above, the beauty of most of these things on the “to-do list” are that they don’t require money. Some require time, some require a bit of programming, but most can be done quickly and relatively easily. So, what should you be doing? ● First, make sure you’re in the game. Everyone at the senior levels of your organi- zation, including you, should be actively engaged with social media. You may not have to use every platform that’s out there, or be intimately involved with “the latest and greatest,” but it’s important to use and understand at least the “Big Four” — Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and now Google+ (www.google.com/+/business/). ● Remember that social media are about participation, engagement and distribution. They’re not just about making friends, or keeping up with people you used to know. They can provide excellent opportunities to engage users (see UsedEverywhere, above), distribute ads, and participate with advertisers and users. ● Craft at least one strategy for each vertical. If you’re involved in just one category, such as property or recruitment, there are still sub-verticals to focus on. People who want to lease a flat have different social media needs than seniors who are downsizing from a large home into a smaller one. Recent graduates use social media on a recruitment site substantially differently than high-level executives. Target them differently, and treat differently. ● Make sure your users can redistribute ads readily. If your site doesn’t already have Facebook and Twitter buttons to allow people to send out an ad through their Twitter or Fa- cebook networks, add them. Tomorrow. ● Engage with your advertisers, too, through social media. Social media are not just about users. Create pages so your advertisers can link to you, and share their success stories on your pages. Connect on their pages, as well. ● Make sure your sales reps follow their clients’ social media feeds. It’s a great way to see what the clients are offering, and what they’re promoting on their sites and feeds. But that’s not enough: ● Make sure your sales reps follow their prospects’ social media feeds, too. Each sales rep should be required to follow at least five to 10 serious prospects — either clients who have lapsed as advertisers and shifted their advertising elsewhere or eliminated it alto- gether, or prospects whom you’ve never been able to land for whatever reason. Again, it’s a great way to find out what’s important to them. And if you “like” them, they may like you back — and that can start a dialog. ● Teach your advertisers how to use social media. Who better than you to become their trusted experts. In our presentations, we show how Inman News is offering free Webi- nars, “Blogging is no longer optional,” sponsored by HomeFinder.com. And how Automotive

News offers a paid series of three Webinars, including “a free surveillance report custom to their dealership, highlighting ways to maximize the dealership’s presence online.” Surely you have someone on your staff who could be providing this kind of training for your clients. You don’t, you say? Grow someone and start being the train- ers your clients know and rely on for social media sup- port. ● In fact, you can be your clients’ social media The AIM Group’s Peter M. agency. Manage their online presence for them. Lots of Zollman (who wrote this article) plumbers, property agents, auto dealers, restaurateurs presented a session about and other important advertisers know exactly what and “social media and classifieds” at how they want to use social media. But even more do the recent International Classi- not. For a flat monthly fee, typically ranging from $100 fied Media Association confer- to $300 depending on needs and services provided, you ence in Dublin, with Tish Hill can be the client’s social media agency. And if you don’t and Jody Epp of UsedEvery- want to do this in-house, or don’t have the staff re- where. You can watch it here. sources to handle it, you can readily outsource it. Simi- larly, or as part of the overall package, you should provide reputation management tools to your clients, com- plete with a “dashboard” showing comments, likes, dislikes, complaints and compliments they’ve received on a wide range of social media tools and websites.

Again: Don’t want to do this in-house? We know of one media company that charges $100 to $150 per month to dozens of clients to provide this service, and outsources it to a vendor that charges about $10 a month. Nice margins. And it’s a great way to see what’s up with your clients, and help them to improve their reputation and / or avoid pitfalls when customers complain.

ICMA: It’s all about social, niches and mobile

BY KATJA RIEFLER AND PETER M. ZOLLMAN

DUBLIN, Ireland — Three key notes from the International Classified Media Association fall conference earlier this month:

 “Prepare to be a niche,” said Helmar Hipp, whose company is closing its print properties and is going to be a much smaller online-classifieds business starting in January.  Mobile classified queries on Google have increased 154 percent in the past year and now generate 17 of all classified-advertising searches, up from 9 percent, said Shane Nolan of Google.  “It’s all about conversations,” said Luke Beatty of Yahoo.

While tourists in Dublin generally enjoy rain, Irish whiskey, country music in the Tem- ple Bar district, and Guinness, the 140 ICMA attendees spent most of their time indoors, away from the unusual sunshine in a mild Dublin autumn, focused on intense discussions of changing business models and best practices in difficult times. (Okay --- they got to enjoy at least some of the standard visitors’ fare, with a tour of the Jameson’s Distillery and a “gala dinner” at the Guinness Storehouse. The Guinness Store- house isn’t where Guinness is brewed, but then again Jameson’s isn’t distilled at the Jameson’s distillery any more, either.) It wasn’t too many years ago that ICMA attendees were focused on their print products. Not so any more. The shift was subtle, or maybe it wasn’t. By this year’s fall conference in Dublin, there was, indeed, just one print-centric session. Everything else was about the future and the present. Interactive classifieds, or “digital,” if you prefer, were definitely the order of business. This time, it was about:

 “Social media incorporated into classifieds.  Mobile users and usage. Not a lot of discussion here of the PC screen any more. Everyone’s moved on, or, more accurately, is platform-neutral. Really. (When we talked about “platform-neutral” 13 and 14 years ago, we got blank stares and the question “What’s a platform?”)  Video incorporated into listings.  SEO and SEM  The new financial metrics of digital-first classified companies — especially those that were print-centric until just a year or two ago.

In the print session, one conversation focused on Quoka, and the decision by the Ger- man publisher to kill its print editions while focusing on its online product, Quoka.de. The statistics presented about print revenue and circulation drop-off were off-the-record, so we won’t share them here. But it’s fair to say they were Ugly, with a capital U. No, UGLY. Peri- od. That’s why the print edition will cease publishing at the end of December, with the loss of 115 jobs. (More about that below.)

* * * * Google search queries for online classifieds have increased 38 percent year on year, and 154 percent on mobile devices, according to Shane Nolan, head of online sales at Google in Ireland and the U.K. In the U.K., searches for cars were up 29 percent year-over-year, stronger than searches for real estate (up 24 percent) or jobs (plus 23 percent). Mobile now accounts for 17 percent of all classifieds queries (up from 9 percent in 2010). Online classified ad spend will overtake print for the first time as soon as 2014, Nolan said, based on estimates from Enders Analysis . It has grown 100 percent year on year for the last 4 years. Nolan also admitted that Google’s continuous effort to make search results more vis- ual, more personalized and more local might affect classified publishers: If users get all the information about a classified listing on their search results page, there’s no need for them

to click through to the classified publisher’s website any more. When asked whether Google was competing directly with classified publishers, however, Nolan said no: “We’re not Auto Trader nor do we want to become Auto Trader. We’re just giving more information [than we used to]. When you’re doing a search on Google you’re getting more and more information,” he said. “Search is only going to become more detailed and more personalized” over time. Asked about Google Trader, the Google-run classifieds sites in Africa (see CIR 12.19, Oct. 14), Nolan said he knew nothing about the project “so let’s move on.”

* * * * Maintaining and growing a classified business requires tough decisions. Helmar Hipp, managing director at Quoka and VM Digital (owned by Vorarlberger Me- dienhaus in Austria), facilitated an outstanding workshop on how to best monetize your print classifieds products as long as you have them. He urged participants to improve their operations and invest in restructuring even before there’s a real need. “Migration is inevitable and your future digital business will be much smaller than what you had before,” he said. Quoka, founded in 1983, employs 140 full-time-equivalent employees at its headquar- ters in Mannheim, Germany. Quoka.de is one of the biggest general classified portals in Ger- many, with more than 11 million visits per month; more than four million private ads, and 800,000 registered users. At the end of the year, the company will eliminate its 16 weekly print classified papers and lay off 75 percent of its staff. (See CIR 12.18, Oct. 2.) The print side has been profitable during the past two years and new print business even generated almost €2 million in new revenue. But according to Hipp, there is no way to stand up against gravity. Since EBay became a mass medium in Germany in 1998, circulation has been shrink- ing year on year, ad sales as well. As long as headcount was reduced accordingly, the business remained sustainable. But now another round of restructuring would have been neces- sary. After considering all options Quoka decided to rather discontinue its print business while it remained profitable rather than being forced to shut it down with losses at a later stage. “Prepare to be a niche,” Hipp told his colleagues. Some of his principles to keep print profitable as long as possible:

 “Renegotiate anything” to outsource non-core parts of the business and to invest in people and automation. An example: The production of 27 printed editions per week was handled by only one-and-a-half full-time employees at Quoka. They used an automated online invoicing system with a digital rights management system and fully integrated payment management.  Involve the staff in decisions to manage margins and cut editions.  Print and online operations should be separated.  No print product investment done without immediate payback. Products that worked for Quoka had been local free-sheets, regional monthly free-sheets and special interest one-shots. However, these new initiatives can’t be continued on their own.

* * * * There also are success stories. Sahibinden in Turkey, for example, has doubled its

staff within the last year and is growing by double digits, chief marketing officer Emre Ersa- hin told the AIM Group in a side talk. The “Güncelim” monetization method we marveled about in May (See CIR 12.9, May 5) will in 2011 earn the company close to one million euros, up from the €600,000 estimated in May. Even though it’s highly restricted, and available only to private-party advertisers, “it’s one of our best performing upselling options,” Ersahin said.

* * * * Building a solid user base is becoming more and more important. Luke Beatty, VP of local and communities at Yahoo, suggested using original and unique content as a trigger on classified websites: “It’s all about conversations.” Besides the content, strong use of search-engine optimization and search-engine marketing as well as interaction with users and social media is essential. Jiri Voves, director at Socialbakers from the Czech Republic, showed how big brands use Facebook as a marketing tool. He stressed that social media activities should differ from the content offered on the company’s website: “Be sure not to duplicate messages. Top brands have different strate- gies on both channels.” He also said that landing tabs on Facebook are really important: Fa- cebook pages with landing tabs grew 44 percent faster. Local pages work better than nation- al ones.

* * * * Tish Hill and Jody Epps of UsedEverywhere.com in Canada, which offers a wide range of social media integrations, and our own Peter M. Zollman, presented a 40-minute show on including social media or “social commerce” on sites. The lead article of this CIR covers that topic extensively; if you want to watch their presentation, here’s the link. Mobile services are a solid business driver. Koen Vandaele, manager of Concentra Dig- ital Media Services at Concentra Media in Belgium, showed the nuts and bolts of an app development for various platforms and some real-world examples. Usability is key. The “App of Antwerp” is a FourSquare-type smartphone app that lets you discover Antwerp, its local businesses and local services, including deals. Users can “check-in” at favorite locations and find friends close by. It’s financed by advertising. The free IPhone app from the Indian publisher Getit allows users to buy and sell anything locally and nationally in various categories like vehicles, properties, jobs, education, computers / mobile or personals. It’s possible to share ads via email / SMS, call the advertiser by clicking on the number, get driving directions, save favorite ads or to save contact de- tails of the advertiser. James Harkin, cofounder and director of technology at Element Software Ltd. from Ireland, shared some additional tricks. He recommended using push notification in combina- tion with location aware services. In order to monetize best, he said, you need to keep users engaged: “You have to deliver value. If you enhance time spent, exposure to ads grows and also your revenue.”

BY KATJA RIEFLER

LONDON — Is it a good sign or a bad sign when an Internet conference feels like a cocktail party? I’d say it doesn’t matter as long as there’s relevant information provided, good networking and a lot of business to be made. In that sense the NOAH Conference 2011 at Old Billingsgate in London was outstanding. The November conference organized by the former Lehman banker Marco Rodzynek and his fellows from NOAH Advisors attracted in its third year 1,150 people from 35 countries. 30 percent came from U.K. and 30 percent from Germany, the rest from all over. It was a good mixture of attendees from Internet companies (60 percent), investors (25 percent) and corporates (media companies, advisors, PR and recruiting). Ninety speakers from 20 countries gave an impressive overview on the current Inter- net business in Europe. Perhaps most noteworthy: unlike at many other Internet events classifieds were a broadly discussed topic both on stage and at the side talks. Among the speakers and participants were representatives of almost all the major classified groups in Europe.

* * * * Jacob Aqraou, recently promoted from president EBay Classfieds Group (ECG) to SVP of EBay Marketplaces Europe, shared the development and investment story of ECG that con- sists of a broad mixture of acquisitions and launches in various countries. His general recommendation: “If you’re not buying the No. 1 or 2 in a market, you better build from scratch.” However, whether there’s more opportunity in building or buying depends on the market. In mature markets with only a few players, there’s no alternative to buying in his eyes, while in mature markets with a lot of players building might be the better option. In emerging markets with only a few players Aqraou sees an opportunity in building, in these kind of markets with a lot of players in buying or partnering. “The team is really important. You have to have great people,” Aqraou emphasized. He also said that he sees EBC’s core in the lead-generating business in the local markets — and this goes far beyond classifieds. With this knowledge in the back of the head it’s absolutely logical that EBC has started group buying activities on some of its European classifieds sites and might introduce them in more countries at a later stage.

* * * * “Classifieds” might indeed need a new definition. “Something with listings in it” might fit better. That was the most popular answer of an unofficial, not representative AIM Group survey I conducted among participants. And it fits well with some of the presentations. For example, take niche sites for luxury goods. Noam Perski founded JamesList three years ago. He now is the CEO of the world’s largest online marketplace for the most expen- sive and exotic things you can imagine. Homes, yachts, jets and cars are for sale on this platform. He built on a trusted global network of 1,200 professional dealers from 44 countries listing more than 60 000 listings. His website reaches nearly 1 million visits per month.

“Heli’s and jets really work well on the site,” Perski shared. He also said that 60 percent of the visits to the Russian version of the website come from London. Until the conference, JamesList only charged listing fees. On stage, Perski announced a new business model: Users now can make offers through Jameslist. If the deal goes through, Jameslist earns a 10 percent transaction commission from the buyer. Within the first day eight users started offers using the new model. Another example: Chrono24.com. In 2009, CEO Tim Stracke acquired the company that was founded in 2003. Today it is the world’s largest marketplace for luxury watches. More than 600 professional dealers, as well as thousands of private clients from 70 countries, use the platform to transact successful sales of a wide selection of high-end, brand-name luxury watches, such as Rolex, IWC, Breitling and Audemars Piguet. Customers have access to 85,000 to 90,000 new and previously owned timepieces, from the traditional Omega cost- ing a few hundred euros, to the exclusive Patek Philippe collectible in excess of a million euros. The gross annual trading volume exceeds €200 million; the average price of a watch is €6,000. Or think of HomeAway Inc.. Dr. Petra Friedmann, President Europe, shared the story of this Austin, Texas, based enterprise that grew from two to 1,000 employees within six years. It is the worldwide leader in online vacation rentals, with sites representing more than 625,000 paid vacation rental home listings throughout more than 145 countries. HomeA- way offers an extensive selection of vacation homes that provide travelers with memorable experiences and benefits, including more room to relax and added privacy, for less than the cost of traditional hotel accommodations. The company also makes it easy for vacation rental owners and property managers to advertise their properties and manage bookings online. The HomeAway portfolio includes HomeAway.com, VRBO.com and Vacation- Rentals.com in the U.S.; HomeAway.co.uk and OwnersDirect.co.uk in the United Kingdom; HomeAway.de in Germany; Abritel.fr and Homelidays.com in France; HomeAway.es in Spain; AlugueTemporada.com.br in Brazil; and HomeAway.com.au in Australia. In addition, HomeA- way operates BedandBreakfast.com, a leading global site for finding bed-and-breakfast properties, providing travelers with another source for unique lodging alternatives to chain ho- tels. * * * * Pricing in classifieds was one of the main panel sessions at NOAH 2011. Autotrad- er.co.uk is with more than 10 million unique users the largest motoring website in Europe. Nathan Coe, Group Director Strategy and New Business at Trader Media Group in the U.K., admitted that it probably charges the highest prices for listings of any European automotive classified portals. Non-contract-customers pay £24 per listing per month ($37 U.S.). Contract customers enjoy discounts and can use Trader Group’s stock management system for car dealers at no extra charge. However, there are upselling options: Dealers can choose between several packages, among them a mobile one, in order to stand-out of the crowd. Autotrader.co.uk is also ob- sessed with customer care, Coe shared: “Reps visits each dealer each month and discuss with them their leads, how their car prices compare to the market and how they could do better. “We have become a business partner as well as a media partner.” Coe showed no interest in moving to a transaction based pricing model, at least as long as the current behavior of users searching online and buying offline persists. Too many

open questions in his eyes, for example: “If a user walk-in at a dealership due to a car he has found on Autotrader and ends-up buying a different car — how should we charge?” Groupe SeLoger.com in France is the market leading group of websites for properties for sale and rent owned by Axel Springer. The group is listed on the French stock market (SLG). Its CEO / Directeur Général Roland Tripard told the audience that the average cost for a listing per month on his sites is €6 to €7. However, the pricing varies per region. It’s much higher in the Paris area, where real estate agents can earn a much higher permission. Groupe SeLoger.com operates Seloger.com as the main property website, Bellesde- meures.com for luxury properties, Selogerneuf.com for new builds, Agorabiz.com for store- fronts and offices as well as Pericles; which is the most popular stock-management software for real estate agents in France. It also owns a Web agency dedicated to the development, hosting and referencing of agents' websites. According to Tripard Seloger.com has increased prices year-on-year by 10 percent. However, price raises always come with innovations, he said: “If you can say to your customer you’re paying more but you’re getting more as well, that’s a much better story.” Real Web SA operates leading Internet real estate and financial portals/marketplaces in selected European countries — including Immobiliare.it/Eurekasa.it and Assicurazione.it/ Mutui.it in Italy, Seguros.es in Spain, Oferty.net in Poland and Spiti24 in Greece. It isn’t in a position to charge that much, according to Real Web chair Andrea Picchioni. Average prices in Italy for real estate listings are only €2 to €2.5 a month. Although prices rise about 15 percent every six months, the level is still low. However, Picchioni expects a healthy increase of revenue within the next three years. About 50 percent of the Italian real estate agents already are using his companies’ services. Basic listings are free on Sahibinden.com, the largest online classifieds and marketplace in Turkey. Sahibinden.com has more than 20 million unique visitors, 2 billion page views per month and more than 60 million monthly visits. It has more than 2.5 million active listings. Burak Ertas, CEO of the company, has introduced some limitations. Private persons for example can’t list more than one home in the real estate category at a time. But advertising remains cheap, also for professionals. The annual subscription fee is only €400 to €600 ($530 - $800 U.S.). Sahibinden is a real household name in Turkey. About 65 to 70 percent of the traffic is direct traffic. Facebook’s contribution to traffic will soon overtake search engines in importance. “Facebook is a giant in Turkey,” Ertas said. Marketing on Facebook works well for his company. A recent price guessing game for real articles on sahibinden.com attracted 100,000 participants in the first month. Xe.gr, the largest classifieds business in Greece, doesn’t charge for basic listings. Ac- cording to George Hadjigeorgue, COO and board member of Golden Deal as well as COO of XE, the company has succeeded in transforming the leading print classifieds business into the leading online classifieds business in Greece but still is focused on further building audience leadership: “We first want to grow and fight the competition.” XE has more than 1 million monthly users and close to 600,000 active monthly classified ads.

* * * * There were other interesting sessions that included classified topics. Presentations and videos will be made available on the conference website: noah-conference.com.

BY STEVE SHIPSIDE

LONDON — As the year approaches its end, Yannick Pons has a lot to smile about. The CEO of the W3 group of classified ad sites, including VivaStreet and EasyRoomMate, he has just doubled the office space of his Warwick Street address and is opening up in another office over the road in order to accommodate a further 30 or so staff before the end of the year. That detail is not just evidence of the seemingly unstoppable growth of the group, but the choice of office location tells a tale all by itself. Arriving in the VivaStreet offices is like walking into a cross between a call center and a dot-com start-up. Based in Warwick street in London's West End, it is a touch crowded, albeit sociably so, with friendly young staff most of whom appear to be glued to a tele- phone. It's the first indication of founder Yannick Pons' number one rule for success which is to “obsess over customers.” Pons takes a seat for the interview while his MD Karim Goudiaby works quietly at a modest desk in the corner. Between them they give the joint impression of a management for all its success continues to be very much focused on results, rather than self- congratulation. Pons' history as a classifieds entrepreneur dates back to 1998 when, fresh from his business degree he founded EasyRoomMate in New York on the basis of his own experience of the difficulty of finding accommodation. Inspired by Craigslist, he went on to create VivaStreet, which now hosts 52 million visitors and 500 million page views per month. The latest addition to the group is WhereToSleep, also known as OuDormir, DondeDormir, or DoveDormo depending on where you happen to be because the site launched simultaneously in 10 countries. That international approach is one of the hallmarks of Pons' group W3. VivaStreet can be found in 18 different countries. In Latin America alone it has 15 million monthly unique visitors and is No. 2 in Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina. But don't go looking for the local offices: Aside from a single office in New York, the global empire is run out of the London office with no local presence whatsoever. Which begs the question “why” at a time when so many other operators are trying to distinguish themselves with local presence. “We started as a flat share site in the U.S. and very early on being Europeans we decided to open in Europe, but we felt what we needed was to have a long table and one per- son per country sat there rather than have a subsidiary in every country. Yes, you need local staff... but in a central location. “New York was not convenient because of the time difference and having opened in 31 countries in total over the years we are probably now the largest flat share site in the world.” The original idea was that adverts were free to place and view but an introduction fee was paid to make the transaction. Now EasyRoomMate is subscription-based with some advertising — Pons claims 25,000 to 35,000 subscriptions a month — and makes its money from a mix of AdSense and premium advertising. The French economics magazine Challenges recently led with the claim that Pons had built a €65 million fortune in the last five years; a claim Pons scoffs at whilst acknowledging

that the group is growing at a formidable rate. “In New York we saw that Craigslist was becoming a force and outside Craigslist was only in English. So the aim was to do a Craigslist using the same model but centralised in the same office. Hence VivaStreet in France, Italy and 10 or so others in Europe then Latin America; the two continents where we are now. We opened the U.K. offices in ’07 -’08 and grew the business out of the U.K. And now employ some 140 people across all the offices.” Keeping the business centralised clearly allows Pons to assert his own personality (relaxed-seeming but evidently energetic) and his hands on approach — there are regular town-hall meetings for all the staff and he is said to be preparing a talent incubator internal- ly. It also helps him insist on his obsession with customer satisfaction. “We are looking more and more at the customer experience by means of surveys and the company is totally focussed on listening. On all of our sites we have a phone number which is very visible and right from the home page you have direct access to our people. We speak a lot to people [the company has call centres in Morocco and Madagascar] and we build lists of issues in products coming from the consumers. “Then I go away for two days and focus on those lists. We also have monitoring tools tracked by our own employees and the thing that stands out here is the attitude and the quality of the people.” Unsurprisingly perhaps this means that there is a faintly detectable distaste for outsourcing in Pons’ approach. “At first we outsourced software, yes, but we found it didn't scale. As soon as you had serious traffic we found it was breaking down and I am not tech savvy enough to manage an outsourced team so in 2005 – 2006 we got a team together to do the tech in-house out of the New York office. By starting off outsourcing we came to certain conclusions yes, but of course that doesn't mean we don't outsource some tasks.” So how does a hands-on, centralised classifieds empire go about expanding dramati- cally in so many different geographical markets? Paradoxically by thinking locally. “We try to be local so for travel, for example we privilege travel from city to city within the same country starting out with France, Italy, Spain, U.K., Austria and Australia and adversing for that local market. The International traveller is a space well catered for by the existing players so we went after a niche strategy, got inventory fast, and concentrat- ed on those going from [say] Marseille to Paris.” Or in the case of WhereToSleep; “WhereToSleep is an extension of EasyRoomMate which is more long term. WhereToSleep is somewhere between the couch surfers and the B and B's and where the alternatives have an average cost of $104 dollars our average is $55. We opened in mid-May and now have over 10 thousand properties — all proprietary content with no imported data and right now we do over 1,200 bookings a month.” As well as thinking locally, Pons believes in being light on your feet: “Before we expand we need to be sure we operate profitably and one of the key elements of this is that we have no venture capital so whatever we do has to be profitable. We use the existing platforms to expand, but a lot depends on people. Everything we work on is classifieds and we really look at markets we can disrupt, where there is no disintermediation. “VivaStreet is a general site and we are launching niche sites off that, to the point where we are not pushing VivaStreet as a general site but rather concentrating on certain categories within it. So we opened in India where VivaStreet is increasing 170 percent and we targeted a very specific sector of jobs.”

© 2011 Advanced Interactive Media Group LLC [email protected] +1-407-788-2780 Page 17 Vol. 12. No. 22r2 Classified Intelligence Report More news, analyses on AIMGroup.com In between editions of Classified Intelligence Report, our global analysts keep you up- to-date on AIMGroup.com. Some content is for clients’ eyes only and is protected by a password that changes with every issue of CIR. The password is usually on Page 2. Below are some recent articles you may have missed. Click a headline to read the full article.

Mobile car shopping, a Cars.com study In a just-published study conducted by Nielsen for Cars.com, mobile car shoppers were found to be younger, affluent, and more likely looking for a new car, as compared with those in the US who car shopped by other means. Nielsen talked to 1,600 shoppers, some of whom even used their smart phones right from the dealer’s lot.

EPPY Winners announced Congratulations to this year’s EPPY award winners, just announced by Editor & Pub- lisher a few minutes ago. Classified kudos to Deseret Digital Media, CareerCast by Adicio and UsedEverywhere.com.

Classifieds in classy east Long Island Bob Edelman, three-year publisher of Dan’s Papers in Long Island, New York, talked with us recently about the elite east end of Long Island where Dan’s List dominates the service business. While it has good features and a nice look, there seems to be a lot of un- tapped revenue here.

Tencent carries Naspers to solid performance Cape Town-based Naspers, Africa’s biggest media group, grew its consolidated revenue by 17 percent from R15.8 billion ($1.9 billion U.S.) in the first six months of the previ- ous financial year to R18.5 billion ($2.2 billion U.S.) in the first six months of the current financial year, thanks to Chinese e-commerce firm Tencent and (probably) the weaker rand.

Trader Media: online profits up 15% At a time when most auto portals are battling with a background of economic down- turn Trader Media Group has come up with stunning half year results. TMG reports six month profits (before tax and interest etc.) to October to have risen around 10 percent to £70.6 million. The digital division saw revenue rise 15 percent to £96.4 million and account for 87 percent of profits.

Time Out buys Keynoir Time Out, the U.K. company best known for its entertainment and travel listings / reviews, has bought daily deals company Keynoir for an undisclosed sum.

Making life easier for international recruiters The Network, an alliance of 49 job boards operating in 125 countries, launched a website aimed at making skilled labor recruitment across borders easier and more effective.

Alibaba prepared for market volatility Alibaba.com, the China-based firm that is the biggest business-to-business e- commerce services provider in the world, has warned that market turmoil experienced in the third quarter of the year is likely to continue. However, it says it is determined to continue focusing on upgrading its business model.

DPG launches MarketView Pro The Digital Property Group has launched a more sophisticated ‘Pro’ version of its MarketView market intelligence software. The launch indicates that for all its ongoing ex- pansion into property portals (most notably with the Zoopla acquisition) the group continues to see an important future for its software as a service division.

New social network for French real estate agents Oliver Casado, one-time regional director of Spir Communication, has launched CmonAgent, a social network for the recommendation of agents by reputation.

The Globe and Mail to move some content behind pay wall Leading Canadian newspaper, The Globe and Mail, says it is planning to put much of its financial content, as well as some feature columnists and analysis pieces, behind a pay wall starting next summer.

Immobilienscout24.de integrates start-ups One year ago the leading German property portal Immobilienscout24 launched an incubator platform helping young start-ups develop their business ideas. What initially seemed to be a business strategy for integrating new, real estate-related online portals into the Deutsche Telekom subsidiary, now has a wider vision.

Dealfish to focus on Nigeria, Kenya Free classified ads platform Dealfish will spend less energy on six of the eight countries it had been operating in in East and West Africa and refocus all its attention and re- sources on Nigeria and Kenya.

Bayt.com enjoys strong growth in UAE According to the Middle East job board Bayt.com, the number of UAE job ads listed on it jumped by 10 percent in the last few months. The job board ascribes the positive development to strong job growth in the private sector of the UAE economy.

Schibsted aims to be world’s biggest classified player Big goals were set at Schibsted’s recent presentation of its Q3 2011 results. CEO Rolv Erik Ryssdal said Schibsted aims to grow further in the field of classifieds and become the largest classified player in the world. “We are ambitious and plan to be No. 1 within three to five years,” he said.

REA Group shows continued growth Australia’s REA Group, part-owned by News Ltd, held its AGM, and released some impressive results.