The Bay Area News Group, a long time partner of iPublish Media Solutions, reached out to see if we could create a website targeted to real estate agents. They wanted to offer programmatic campaigns to be able to compete for this growing opportunity with real estate agents in the Bay Area.

The challenge is that Real Estate agents know they need a digital presence, spending is up 2.2% this year (75% on digital)*, but solutions for the industry are fragmented, complicated, and expensive. BANG’s goal was to create a completely self serve programmatic advertising solution that was simple, powerful, and affordable for their Real Estate agents. Because programmatic campaigns run across the internet on nationally branded sites and can be targeted to mobile devices they are equally as effective no matter who sells them. This presents newspapers with an unlimited opportunity to drive ad revenue beyond their own websites capturing all new ad revenue as well as new and returning real estate advertisers.

Working with BANG we streamlined AdPortal giving it a simpler workflow and integrating it with live MLS data. The agents first choose to advertise a listing or their services and pick their package, then they build their ad and schedule their campaign. Just about everything they do is point and click and they’re finished in just minutes. The power of the program is in the integration with a powerful DSP where the campaigns are booked. The campaigns are targeted to be delivered within a 15 mile radius of the listings location and a retargeting pixel is then generated and made available to be placed on the Realtor’s website which in turn retargets their website visitors.

These campaigns offer the same powerful features other more expensive programmatic campaigns offer such as the reporting described above; 70% of all ads are being served above the fold; the click through rates are approaching 1% and inventory is being purchased using real time bidding utilizing 30 real estate data segments. 100% of this revenue is new revenue most of it coming from agents and brokers who are NOT currently doing business with BANG. It’s a prime example of creating a new revenue stream selling a new ad product that is beyond the scope of a newspaper’s mainstream products.

*Borrell 2015