Zoopla has fired the latest salvo in the long-running war of words over visits to the rival OnTheMarket portal.
It claims that new figures show OTM's traffic fell 25 per cent last week compared to the previous seven days.
Zoopla, using data from the independent internet monitoring service Hitwise, says that traffic to OTM has been falling steadily for the past few days following the end of its six week launch marketing campaign, and claims that the gap between its traffic and those to Zoopla itself and Rightmove are now actually widening.
It then says that there is what it calls an apparent lack of engagement by those visiting its website with an average of only 1.5 pages viewed per visit last week versus 7.1 on Zoopla, according to Hitwise. It claims Zoopla's total consumer engagement last week was nearly 100 times that of OTM with 21 times more visits and almost five times more content viewed per visit.
Two months in and the data shows clearly that OTM is a very expensive and ineffective marketing channel at this point. Every day that OTM restricts its members from spending their marketing budgets freely those agents are spending far more and getting far less than they should says Zoopla's communications spokesman Lawrence Hall.
That makes those businesses less efficient and competitive and the longer that OTM takes to act in removing the marketing restrictions placed on its members, the greater the damage it is causing to those businesses and the bigger the advantage it is handing to their competitors he says.
The two portals have been slugging it out over website traffic for several weeks and last evening OnTheMarket made responded to the latest accusation with Ian Springett, OTM chief executive, describing the traffic figures circulated by Zoopla are inaccurate.
We stand by every figure we have previously quoted. On March 6 and 7, we passed the two million mark of unique users. Contrary to Zoopla's claims, the traffic levels have remained buoyant throughout March. The results of our multi-million pound marketing campaign are continuing to emerge and the property-seeking public are appreciating the faster, cleaner, fresher search experience which OnTheMarket offers" he says.
"Ultimately, the property-seeking public and the agents themselves will decide over time which portals deliver the most value. We remain confident in becoming the number two portal by January 2016."
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Comments
the only things worse than a lost 5 year contract would be the embarrasement of feeling like a clown in front of a shop window full of those logos
'...what we have instead is an unseemly and boring industry infight that changes nothing.....',
Mr Shinerock seems to be one of the leading lights in this activity
One thing is for certain, this profession is becoming a 'circus' of nonsense.
I see the pro-Zoopla brigade are out in force today. How predictable.
More to the point, I think the public still haven't really heard of OnTheMarket. Despite the extensive PR campaign and multi-million pound TV ad that is played across all the main commercial channels, most people I speak to aren't really aware of them in the way they are Rightmove and Zoopla.
It takes a while for a brand to grow, of course, but I think OTM were expecting to have a greater impact sooner. Their ambitions to unseat Zoopla haven't come to fruition yet, despite Springett telling us otherwise, and these latest figures from Hitwise don't make for great reading. I always thought the whole AM/OTM thing was very self-serving and anti-competitive, so I'm not exactly sorry to see this news.
What I find fascinating about all this is the psychology of the situation. Despite RM being the original target, the war is being waged against Zoopla because Ian Springett says its best to take out the number two portal before moving on to the number 1. The fascinating bit is watching the obedience and gusto with which OTM supporters have thrown themselves loyally into the fight. Zoopla is now being vilified, rubbished and demonised whatever they do but the real question is if Ian Springett has the interests of his agents at heart or just his own interests. Can any OTM agent say they actually understand why destroying Zoopla first instead of RM is in their interest The last I heard coming second is still losing and doesn't the demise of Zoopla leave us with a duopoly In reality it is in OTM's interest to get Zoopla but it defeats the object as far as the membership are concerned. Imagine the impact if 5000 offices left RM, it would have been massive, what we have instead is an unseemly and boring industry infight that changes nothing, alienates the public and makes way for the online agents lining up to take a bite out of the High St .
More bad news for OTM - can't say I'm surprised. Obviously, the OTMers will point to this being another attack by a running scared Zoopla, ignoring the fact that this data is from an independent organisation.
All's fair in love and war, as they say. Springett and co were quite happy to dish it out, so it had to be expected that they'd get both barrel loads back from Zoopla.
Not looking good for OTM.
More baiting from Zoopla - what are they scared of If OTM is doing so badly, why do Zoopla feel the need to keep telling us. Smacks of fear and insecurity.
What a surprise! The OTM bubble is already bursting. *Rubs hands with glee*.
Strange, the past 2 weeks i've had 6 OTM enquiries, 4 of which have resulted in a viewing. This is more than I ever used to get from Needaproperty or Primelocation. So far so good.
It looks like the public have decided Mr Springett.