The portal wars are heating up. Aiming for the superiority of the residential property portal, co-starring group (parent company) apartments.com and homes.com) will air four ads during this Sunday's broadcast of Super Bowl LVIII between the San Francisco 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs.
“The Super Bowl is a deep part of American culture and holds a disproportionate share of everyone's hearts,” said Andy Florence, CEO of KoStar Group. Ta. “So it's the perfect place for your brand to get noticed.”
One of the ads will be from Apartments.com, and the other three will feature Homes.com, CoStar's housing information platform. All four ads will feature celebrities including Jeff Goldblum, Dan Levy, and Heidi Gardner, as well as a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo from Florence.
When it came time to choose advertising talent, Florence talked about Levy and Gardner, who starred in and co-wrote Saturday Night Live. Jiro The February 2021 skit was easy.
“Dan Levy and Heidi Gardner are two incredible talents who clearly align with the way America views online real estate,” Florance said.
He noted that both Levy and Gardner helped write CoStar Group's Super Bowl ad.
KoStar said it plans to continue running the commercials throughout the remainder of 2024, including during major television broadcasts such as the Oscars and NBA playoffs.
The company has been promoting its Super Bowl ad spots with a series of consumer ads on YouTube featuring Levy, Gardner and rapper Lil Wayne. The ad promises a “powerful new home shopping platform” and ends this Sunday.
“We started by teasing the commercial, especially the talent and celebrities that appear in the commercial, to generate interest. This would help draw a little more attention to the commercial when it airs during the Super Bowl. “Yes,” Florence said.
In a video explaining its marketing strategy also released this week, CoStar told real estate agents that Homes.com ads will appear on streaming platforms, on broadcast television, on digital radio, and even during major events. I'm telling you. It also said it spent about $1 billion to “drive 80 billion impressions” and reach “more than 90 percent of households.”
“No other competitor can match our investment in generating leads for every agent,” the video states.
Part of this investment was to build content in approximately 21,000 neighborhoods and nearly 100,000 high schools, elementary schools, and middle schools across the United States, Florence said.
“When people buy a home, they're not just buying a home, they're joining a community,” Florence says.
The company is used to spending large amounts of money on marketing. In 2015, CoStar spent his $100 million on consumer marketing to promote the revamped Apartments.com site.
“I think by now everyone is familiar with 'Change your apartment, change your world,' and Jeff Goldblum playing Brad Bellflower, but that was a big gamble for us. We're investing a lot in that, and we're investing three to four times that amount into this campaign,” Florance said. “People spend more money on their homes than they do on beer or Doritos, so it's important that the marketing matches the importance of real estate in people's lives.”
Coster, long known as a major player in commercial real estate listings, began playing for a piece of the residential real estate pie with the acquisitions of Homesnap and Homes.com in 2020 and 2021, respectively.
According to the company, Homes.com reached over 100 million monthly unique visitors in September 2023, an increase of 1,290% year over year. meanwhile, realtor.com The number of monthly unique visitors is reported to be 74 million. red fin It recorded 52 million unique visitors in the second quarter of 2023. A significant increase in monthly unique visitors has propelled Homes.com to second place among the most-visited residential real estate platforms, trailing only long-time leader Zillow.
Looking ahead, Florance feels it's only a matter of time before Homes.com overtakes Zillow.
“We are confident that we have built the best possible site for both agents and home buyers and sellers,” Florence said. “We've moved up from No. 5 or No. 6 to No. 2, but we're just beginning to market our brand to consumers. This is the next stage in the development of Homes.com. We're playing the long game. We are fighting.”
