A property portal which claimed to be Scotland’s biggest property website will not be allowed to make that claim again, following a protest to the advertising watchdog by Rightmove.
Rightmove challenged the TV advert by S1 Homes, owned by newspaper group Newsquest (Herald & Times).
The TV advert said: “The new S1 Homes website makes looking for your next home easy. We’re Scotland’s biggest property site with over 30,000 homes to buy or rent; that’s what we call good looking.”
Rightmove told the Advertising Standards Authority that the claim to be Scotland’s biggest property website was misleading because Rightmove had more than 30,000 homes available to buy or rent in Scotland.
In its response to the Advertising Standards Authority, S1 Homes Ltd they had over 30,000 homes available to buy or rent and that no other Scottish property site – being a site which was based in Scotland and specifically served the Scottish property market – had more.
They provided data that compared the number of properties advertised on their website with the other main Scottish property sites and said that the Scottish property market had distinct features, including the home reports system.
Advertising service firm Clearcast said the claim had previously been approved and had been broadcast for a year and a half without complaint. It emphasised that the advertisers were made aware that they were expected to regularly monitor competitor sites and remove the claim should their market position change.
The Advertising Standards Authority said that the claim to be Scotland’s biggest property website was ambiguous. It was likely to be interpreted by consumers as meaning that S1 had more homes advertised than any other Scottish-run property site; or that it more properties than any other site, irrespective of origin; or both.
Because it had not seen comparative data showing that S1 Homes had more properties listed than any other property portal, it said the claim was misleading.
The TV advert that made the claim is now banned.
A spokesperson from S1Homes said: “We’re disappointed with the ruling. We still consider ourselves to be Scotland’s biggest property site. Our current TV campaign, though, has been slightly amended to comply with the ASA’s ruling.”
Comments
Rightmove must be doing something 'right' - they alone collected £97m in fees last year from around 10,500 agents and made £65m in profit; around £6,200 profit per agent..!!
Well done rightmove. Keep up the good work.
@Fact you are wrong, without registered login onto a site there is no way of telling the"people" from the person or roaming spambots
The figures are not correct and are manipulated to win the willy waving contest.
If the RM figures are correct (10,000,000 people view RM every month) in 12 months twice the population of the UK visited RM (120,000,000) given the total of number of completions, about 750,000, even if RM were responsible for every single sale the, odds of finding a buyer from RM is 160:1! A nag like that would not get to run in the Grand National yet so many Agents have it down as the punters choice
The thing is the ASA, most Agents and the vast majority of the public are so bad at numbers the one can quote
any old number at them and ignorance prevents them being challenged.
@fact
yes- ABCe is a well respected source for a site's visitor traffic. which is why so many sites don't quote it.
I believe you can look at the official numbers of users and pages at www.abc.org.uk where they have the actual number of users and pages. Seems like the majority of people actually do use Rightmove
i wouldn't exactly say RM are in decline...their traffic seems to be very constant and Zoopla for all their consolidations are still only around 1/2 - 1/3 their visitor numbers.
& Zoopla is a nosy neighbour / info site isn't it in the way it's been branded? not sure if their visitors are on average as committed to actually moving anywhere.
oh and I suppose that "Britain Moves at Rightmove" is not a complete load of b----cks - no one likes a bully RM and maybe not coincidentally - no one likes you!
When all the rhetoric and stats are said and done that'll be the real reason that your customers will are and have started to find alternatives - other posters are right your business has had it's best years.
The far bigger story here is that this type of negative behaviour is a sure fire proven sign that the perpetrators light is waning - their dominance and therefore powers have peeked and passed - they are not over yet of course but believe me in time this event will serve as a marker of the beginning of their end!
If you hold shares ( and that include you Milesy ) offload now they are only going one way :)
Rightmove dont have more than 30,000 homes available to buy or rent in Scotland. Their Agents do ;-)
ah, you have to love these creatives!
if rightmove has as many properties or more than s1homes and is available in scotland - which it is - then s1 isn't scotland's biggest property site ie in the sense that it is the biggest site available to the scottish nation.
that said, britian moves at rightmove? a little over egged surely....
I LOVE this story!
Does anyone know where to find the 'offical' figures for how many visitors Rightmove actually receives? As in the industry accepted figures, not just a press release from Rightmove?
I would not trust statistical claims from Rightmove nor indeed it's competitors. Our agency was with Rightmove for many years but left two months ago. We have no regrets at all and have seen no fall in our business. We have saved £780 per month which helps our small business tremendously. I do not know if it is a national problem but in my own area agents "manipulated" it's properties on Rightmove. Some times properties which had sold stayed on for a long time and resulted in possibly 20% of properties appearing on searches when already sold. Many properties were taken off temporarily only to appear very quickly and were then treated as new to the market properties.
Looks like RM could be opening a can of worms for themseves here! ;-), sometimes it is as well to keep ones head low......... Looks like they are starting to feel the pressure.
..investigated the RM TV advert claim that 10,000,000 people visit the RM site every month? Has anyone looked at a list of the 10,000,000 individuals?
I think it audacious and misleading to claim that 1/6th of the population visit RM every month when it is fairly widely accepted that there is no real way of saying who is looking any sites other then by unique login that ignores multiple individual access.