Trade Me boss says it's time to move from print ads to digital

New Zealand-based auction and classifieds platform, Trade Me's CEO, Jon MacDonald, says he's not concerned with NZME dipping its toes into the real estate listings sector. In fact, he sees an opportunity to convince more agents and vendors to jump ship from traditional print advertising to the more modern digital.

Trade Me generates about 58 percent of its revenue from classified advertising, the domain that was once the cornerstone of newspaper publishers. Property listings revenue grew 23 percent in the six months ended Dec. 31, on a 7.7 percent lift in listing volumes. 

The Wellington-based company largely competes in the online space with Real Estate Institute-owned realestate.co.nz for property listings, although both are scooping up advertising spend from newspapers. 

The New Zealand Herald newspaper publisher NZME has been lured into the online market and is optimistic about the gains it's made so far. Launching its OneRoof portal in March last year, NZME generated $700,000 from the new platform, of which $500,000 came in the fourth quarter.

The Herald is Auckland's flagship newspaper. With the country's biggest city accounting for about a quarter of all residential house sales, NZME counts real estate as its biggest revenue vertical, with print listings still popular despite the structural decline in hard-copy advertising. 

Macdonald says the migration from print to online offers room for all digital players to boost their revenue from real estate listings.

"People selling houses still spend a lot of money for advertising in newspapers, and our view is that the vast majority of buyers are online," he told BusinessDesk. "That migration of spend means that there's a lot of opportunity for us.

"We will always welcome competition and new competitors like NZME and OneRoof, but we're really confident around the opportunity we have in front of us regardless."

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