Zillow.com, newspapers team up for ads

Faced with the threat of losing more classified ads to online competitors, some newspaper publishers are looking to a Web real-estate information company to help them stay in the game.

Zillow.com said Tuesday that 11 publishers, including Hearst Corp., which owns the Houston Chronicle, San Francisco Chronicle and Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and MediaNews Group Inc., which owns the Denver Post and San Jose Mercury news, have forged an advertising partnership.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

On Zillow, based in Seattle, Web surfers can list their home for sale or see what it might sell for, and they can ask owners or neighbors for more information about houses on the market.

The 282 newspapers involved in the deal can incorporate some of Zillow's content and features into their own sites.

Zillow was the fifth-most-visited real estate site in the U.S. in October, according to data from Nielsen Online. Realtor.com, the site of the National Association of Realtors, got the most traffic, followed by sites operated by Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Time Warner Inc.'s AOL.

Most major newspaper publishers have deals in place with major online employment classifieds companies such as Yahoo's HotJobs and Monster Worldwide Inc.'s Monster.com. And Gannett Co. and McClatchy Co. have a stake in a site of their own, CareerBuilder.

But few have deals in place for real estate advertising.

The other newspaper companies working with Zillow are Lee Enterprises Inc., Media General Inc., Morris Communications Company, Paddock Publications, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, The E.W. Scripps Company, Times-Shamrock Communications, the Journal Register Co. and The Day Publishing Company.

Starting in the first half of next year, newspapers' ad-sales teams will offer advertisers the chance to buy home-for-sale listings and open-house notices on Zillow in addition to print and online classifieds. The newspaper and the Web company will share revenue from the Zillow listings.

Spencer Rascoff, Zillow's chief financial officer, said many details are still being worked out, including how prominently newspaper-generated ads will be shown on the site and some aspects of the revenue sharing. But Rascoff said newspapers will not pay for integrating Zillow features into their Web sites.

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On the Net:

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