Schibsted Media and Schibsted Marketplaces to Become Real Estate Rivals?

When Schibsted, the Norwegian media and marketplace operator, underwent a major detachment between its Marketplace and News and Media segments for approximately $570 million last year—it probably didn't think it would end up competing with its former sister business.

How could it? The businesses now operated in completely different markets.

But now Schibsted Marketplaces, a publicly traded entity whose revenues are driven primarily by Norwegian horizontal giant Finn, will face off against the privately-owned Schibsted Media, which has agreed to an "exciting and attractive" collaboration with the specialised real estate challenger portal Hjem.

Under the terms of the agreement, Schibsted Media will divert traffic from its newspapers—which the company says has "a strong position in housing advertisements and housing material"—towards Hjem's marketplace, a much younger challenger business founded in 2024.

According to Similarweb, Hjem received just over 330,000 web visits in the past 28 days, while Finn recorded more than 30 million web visits during the same period.

Per Håkon Fasting, Executive Vice President for advertising and user payments at Schibsted Media, commented:

"The short answer [to whether this agreement would have worked under the 'old' Schibsted model] is no.

"Housing material and housing advertisements are popular among our users, and we are pleased to have established a collaboration with a marketplace that both looks good and uses modern technology with newly developed services. At Schibsted Media, we pride ourselves on being at the forefront of developments, both in how we present news, but also in how we ensure that we lead in technological developments on the sales and advertising side.

"Housing advertisements have always been part of the financing of journalism in Schibsted.

"[Competing with Schibsted Marketplaces] will go very well. We are very well reconciled as companies and have a clarified relationship today. It's also important to say that we also have a customer and supplier relationship with Finn today. Finn buys ad impressions from us to get an effect for their products."

Real estate revenues grew 12% YoY for Schibsted Marketplaces in Q4 2024 to NOK 263 million (USD 23.8 million), while full year operating revenues grew 11% YoY to NOK 2.1 billion (USD 190.3 million). Schibsted took complete ownership of Finn.no in May 2024 after increasing its shareholding from 90% to 100%.

Schibsted plans on divesting entirely from the recruitment sectors in Sweden and Finland, citing challenges in overtaking the market leaders in those respective markets.