OneRoof Trades Audience for Yield as Digital Revenue Climbs 19%

OneRoof, the property portal of NZX-listed media group NZME, lifted segment EBITDA by 32% to NZD 3.6 million in FY2025 while average monthly online audience fell by a quarter, the result of a deliberate switch of second-half marketing spend from total audience growth to agent enquiry conversion. Notable points from NZME's full-year results for the twelve months ended 31 December 2025 include:

• OneRoof segment revenue was NZD 28.5 million, up 5% on a roughly flat New Zealand residential market
• Digital revenue rose 19% to NZD 19.2 million, more than offsetting a 17% drop in print revenue to NZD 8.8 million
• Segment EBITDA on an IFRS 16 basis was NZD 3.6 million, up 32% year-on-year; on a pre-IFRS 16 basis the EBITDA margin moved from 7% to 9%
• New residential listings on the platform reached 120,000 for the year, with the upgrade-conversion rate climbing to 45% in Auckland from 43%, and to 26% across the rest of NZ from 24%
• Average revenue per upgraded listing reached NZD 528 in Auckland and NZD 294 across the rest of NZ, up from NZD 470 and NZD 279 the prior year
• Online audience averaged 647,000 monthly users for the year, down from 854,000 in 2024 when OneRoof briefly held the top ranking

NZME described the marketing reorientation in its results presentation:

"Marketing in the second half of 2025 was refocussed on delivering enquiries to agents, rather than an overall total audience. This has been effective at delivering, but at the cost of total audience."

The driver behind the digital revenue jump was a step-up in both the rate at which new listings were upgraded and the price paid per upgrade. In Auckland, the upgrade-conversion rate moved from 41% in 2023 to 43% in 2024 to 45% in 2025, while average revenue per upgrade in the same market climbed from NZD 422 to NZD 470 to NZD 528 over the same window. The rest of NZ market did the same at a smaller scale, with the upgrade rate moving from 17% to 24% to 26% over the same three years.

The audience compression was apparently a strategic choice rather than a competitive setback. Average monthly online users fell from 854,000 in 2024, when OneRoof briefly held the top ranking, to 647,000 in 2025 with a 235,000 gap to the new leader. NZME's commentary on the H2 marketing pivot suggests management is willing to keep ceding raw audience as long as enquiries to agents, and the revenue those enquiries support, hold up.

NZME also said it had insourced the OneRoof product and engineering team during 2025, "at no incremental cost", and that a refreshed OneRoof mobile app would launch in the first half of 2026. The deck describes the new app as offering a hybrid map-and-list search view, with OneRoof Estimates and council rating valuations shown directly on listings and map pins.

NZME's HY1 2026 update is due in late August. It will be the first half-year read on whether OneRoof's monetisation gains hold up alongside any rebuilt audience growth.