The Nationwide Promoting Division on Friday denied CoStar’s problem to Realtor.com’s “No. 1 site real estate professionals trust” tagline. CoStar stated it’s primarily based on outdated information. NAD disagreed.
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The Nationwide Promoting Division has handed Realtor.com guardian firm Transfer one other win in an ongoing promoting battle with rival CoStar Group.
On Friday, NAD, an arm of the Higher Enterprise Bureau’s Nationwide Packages, rejected CoStar’s problem towards Realtor.com’s “No. 1 site real estate professionals trust” promoting tagline. The Virginia-based business behemoth challenged the tagline, which is predicated on an August 2023 double-blind survey of over 1,300 actual property professionals, for being outdated and failing to mirror the present sentiments of actual property professionals. Nonetheless, NAD stated the survey outcomes have been nonetheless well timed on the time the declare was filed in mid-July.
“Realtor.com, operated by Move, Inc., is affiliated with the National Association of Realtors, the real estate industry trade association that owns the US trademark to the term ‘Realtor,’” the choice learn. “The challenged claim appeared online, including at the top of Realtor.com’s homepage.”
“In support of the challenged claim, Move relied on results of a double-blind survey of over 1,300 real estate professionals conducted in August 2023 by a market research firm,” it added. “The National Advertising Division (NAD) determined that the survey was reliable support for the claim. Further, NAD determined that the survey remained timely during the period of the challenge.”
Though NAD dominated in Transfer’s favor, the Division urged the portal to conduct a brand new survey because the validity of the August 2023 outcomes received’t “last in perpetuity.” Transfer informed NAD they already performed a brand new survey in August 2024 and have up to date the tagline quotation to mirror the latest outcomes.
A Realtor.com spokesperson lauded NAD for its choice and stated the portal is happy with its robust trade repute.
Though CoStar misplaced the problem, an organization spokesperson stated they stand by Properties.com’s “Your Listing, Your Lead” enterprise mannequin and the traction it has gained amongst brokers.
“We know agents hate lead diversion and love Homes.com’s ‘Your Listing, Your Lead’ business model,” the spokesperson stated in a press release. “We continue to believe that Realtor.com’s approach of selling off leads is bad for agents and bad for consumers. Homes.com’s climbing Net Promoter Score (NPS), a measure used to gauge customer loyalty, satisfaction, and enthusiasm with a company, now surpass Realtor.com’s, shows consumers agree.”
NAD’s choice is the newest chapter in an ongoing battle between CoStar Group and Transfer, which gained steam final fall when Transfer started taking challenge with CoStar’s claims about Properties.com’s triple-digit site visitors progress. The strain adopted each portals into the brand new yr, as CoStar CEO Andy Florance and Realtor.com CEO Damian Eales traded barbs at Inman Join New York, with every chief touting the energy of their enterprise mannequin and urging brokers to query the claims of the opposite.
The swimsuit has taken a number of twists and turns over the previous few months, with Transfer pushing for a preliminary injunction to dam Kaminsky and CoStar’s alleged continued entry to Transfer-owned recordsdata. Nonetheless, the portal’s quest for the injunction has been unsuccessful, with California District Decide George H. Wu noting Transfer’s counsel has failed to supply adequate information to help their request for the injunction together with two current Pc Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and Complete Pc Information Entry and Fraud Act (CCDAFA) claims towards Kaminsky. Wu has given Transfer’s counsel the prospect to file a second amended criticism, because the portals transfer towards a summer time 2025 trial date.
Throughout the first phases of the swimsuit, Transfer additionally filed an NAD problem towards CoStar over the site visitors information it highlighted in its promoting. Within the problem, Transfer took challenge with Properties.com’s claims that it reached greater than 150 million distinctive month-to-month guests on its website and had double the distinctive month-to-month guests of Realtor.com. Transfer stated each statistics have been primarily based on the Properties.com Community and never the Properties.com web site alone, which boasted fewer distinctive month-to-month guests.
NAD sided with Transfer and banned CoStar from utilizing “Homes.com just reached 156M monthly unique visitors” and “Homes.com now has DOUBLE Realtor.com’s traffic” in its adverts. Nonetheless, NAD allowed CoStar to proceed utilizing Properties.com Community site visitors in its adverts, so long as they “explicitly disclosed it in the body of its advertisements.”
Regardless of their authorized spats, the newest spherical of earnings reveals each corporations are going through comparable challenges because the US housing market works its manner by a medley of headwinds attributable to cussed mortgage charges, slowing gross sales, and wavering shopper sentiment and exercise.
CoStar’s Properties.com and Properties.com Community site visitors reached 130 million and 85 million distinctive month-to-month guests, respectively within the third quarter. Though these metrics represented double-digit annual progress, they’re a step down from the earlier quarter, which noticed Community site visitors at 156 million and Properties.com site visitors at 110 million. The corporate can be going through just a few hiccups in rising membership site visitors, which was flat for the quarter. Nonetheless, Florance stated Properties.com’s challenges have been anticipated as the corporate is “in the bottom of the first inning” of progress.
E-mail Marian McPherson
