PropertyGuru brings in its media buying in-house

PropertyGuru will now operate its media buying in-house to become more flexible with its already large inventory of first-party data and offer a higher-end user experience, says the property portal's Chief Marketing Officer, Bjorn Sprengers.

Sprengers claims the decision to take its media in-house its media was driven by ‘more strategic considerations’ and not a reflection on its media agency's performance.

“PropertyGuru’s has 25 million monthly visitors across our markets and to optimize their user experience, and with user consent, we gather a wealth of information about these visitors. The ability to act on that information to the benefit of the visitor is what sits at the core of PropertyGuru’s mission,” the Dutchman explains to The Drum.

“The insights gained in the process, give us a tremendous advantage in selecting and optimizing the right content and media. An external agency is less well positioned to leverage that asset than a well-organized internal team is.”

The brand has always seen itself as a technology company that is more than a property search portal which helps consumers make more confident decisions with AI and machine learning.

Now, it is building programmatic knowledge and expertise internally to use its first-party data when buying media, with the view of owning the entire programmatic tech stack in the long term with its own data management platform (DMP) and demand-side platform (DSP).

Sprengers, whose remit now also includes fintech, says that since PropertyGuru streamlined the way it plans and buys media after bringing it in-house, he has noticed great improvements in media efficiencies, especially in the online buys.

More importantly, he adds, is that he is seeing an improved speed of execution between teams and a higher degree of accountability within the teams towards the return of their investments.

Read more here

Join us November 12-15 for the Property Portal Watch Conference Madrid 2019.