OnTheMarket plc has confirmed today that it has signed a commercial media partnership with major news publisher Reach.
Reach owns nine national news brands including The Mirror, The Express and the Daily Star. Its 110 regional titles include the Manchester Evening News, Liverpool Echo and Bristol Post, along with over 70 online brands including the Live network of sites and hyperlocal platform InYourArea. Through its scale it reaches over 80% of the UK population every day.
OTM says that the aim of the partnership with Reach is to enhance their digital presence and footprint with the aim of increasing leads for agents.
The strategy will engage consumers across the entire Reach digital inventory, including contextual advertising, sponsored newsletters and digital content on a national, regional and local level.
The partnership is already in its initial roll-out stages and will also soon see Reach providing OTM member agents with a bespoke social media service, which will include a dedicated account manager and planner to create and execute social media campaigns on their behalf.
This service will be available only to OTM customers and will also enable them to purchase their social media advertising via Reach, providing agents with a highly convenient and cost effective ‘turnkey’ social media solution.
Jason Tebb, chief executive officer of OnTheMarket plc commented: “As the biggest multi-channel news and media business in the UK, with mainstream national titles as well as the majority of all regional and local news brands in their portfolio, our new relationship with Reach will significantly boost our consumer engagement as well as providing a valuable platform to support our estate agents’ brands via social media campaigns on a hyperlocal basis. This represents ‘best in class’ local coverage to support our brand, which is what our agents have been telling me they both want and need.”
Terry Hornsby, group digital director of Reach plc, said: “Jason’s vision for the future direction of OnTheMarket is perfectly aligned with the Reach strategy to create hyperlocal, hypertargeted consumer experiences. We will also be partnering on a newsletter powered by Reach and OnTheMarket to provide consumers with the information and quality content that people with an interest in the property market really need and want. OnTheMarket will benefit by receiving a far richer picture of its target audience’s behaviours and a much deeper connection with them, helping to deliver its long-term business goals.”
Tebb added: “Terry and his colleagues have provided us with a truly creative and innovative strategy that will benefit both the consumer and our estate agent customers. With the ability to promote both our brand and those of our agents in such a hypertargeted way on both a local and national basis, we really are taking our consumer engagement strategy to the next level.”
As estate agents turned away from giving the press publications its cash a long time ago, it seems curious that agents will now be paying a property portal and supporting the coffers of Reach, you could not make this up. I am a little lost on why this would be of benefit to anyone apart from the account managers at reach? To me all it seems is that Reach now have access to the details of all OTM agents who will be badgered for an extra spend on top of their usual digital spend. Having dealt with a few of my own clients recently who had been looking at Reach as a way of targeting their market, the proposed spend was eye watering. My thoughts would be that if agents want to go back and support a press publication – they are better off setting up a collective, and using this buying power to get a favourable and reduced rate. But maybe OTM has agreed such terms. The devil as they say is always in the detail.
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Vested interest Andrew as I work for Reach. You’re slightly off the mark regarding your ‘press’ comments. Yes, Reach still publish lots of national and regional print titles but they are also the UK’s largest news publisher with more than 42 million users visiting their online network every month.
I’m not privy to the detail of the deal but I think you will find that OTM will benefit from a multimedia platform where digital presence is at the forefront of promoting the portal and their members.
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As Reach are renowned for their clickbait headlines – Are we going to have look forward to these listings in future – “5 Reasons you just can’t miss this house, you won’t believe number 4”
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