Japanese Portal Operator Lifull Now Detecting 87% of 'Decoy Ads' Thanks to AI

The Japanese real estate portal operator Lifull claims that it has improved the efficacy of its 'decoy ads' detection tool to 87%. The figure is up from 68% for the 2021-2022 financial year and just 28% for 2020-2021.

According to a release on the company's website, it's common practice in Japan for multiple agents to list the same property to capture lead data. The 'decoy ads' are those that are no longer available.

“Lifull Home’s aims to eradicate decoy properties and has undertaken various initiatives such as active advertising research and information collaboration with management companies,”

Our in-house developed AI is trained on the big data that LIFULL HOME'S has accumulated over many years, and we are proud that this is a groundbreaking initiative with uniqueness and potential not found in other companies. Until now, we have gradually continued to improve accuracy, even though we have repeatedly made various improvements, efforts, and failures, such as examining learning content and comparing and verifying multiple AI models.

We would like to accelerate this initiative as a major step towards solving the problem of "decoy properties", which has been a long-standing issue in the real estate industry." said Yuko Miyasako, Head of Lifull's Information  Review Group.

The portal has also announced that its in-house AI lab has built new AI-powered functions into its back end to help enrich the data around agents' listings.

Listings submitted to the portal through the so-called 'AtHome Business Base' (ATBB) agent back-end system will have their images scanned to determine the type of image (whether it is a kitchen or bedroom for example) and to extract taggable meta-data features (aircon, dishwasher, etc) while another tool analyses floorplans to determine the presence of features.

Lifull operates the Homes.co.jp portal domestically as well as several adjacent businesses including senior care, a search engine for storage solutions and an investment company. It also runs many portal websites around the world as well as aggregator sites Mitula and Trovit via its Overseas division.