Zillow recently announced it’s allowing advertisers to use its housing intent data outside the Zillow platform, with Pinterest as the first partner in that expansion.
The news comes about a week after Zillow announced layoffs of around 500 employees as part of its restructuring.
And while Zillow is presenting this as an exciting new tool for brands, Byron Lazine and Nicole White call it exactly what it is: a way for Zillow to generate ad revenue from data it already owns.
Byron and Nicole covered Zillow’s data play on this week’s episode of The Real Word, unpacking what the Pinterest partnership actually does, why Zillow is doing it, who benefits, and what any of this means for real estate agents.
What’s New About Zillow’s Deal with Pinterest?
Zillow Elevate already existed as Zillow’s advertising business; this deal moves it from custom on-site campaigns into off-site media partnerships like Pinterest.
The deal with Pinterest lets advertisers target Zillow consumer segments inside Pinterest Media Network Connect, Pinterest’s ad platform.
Here’s what that includes:
- 34 distinct Zillow consumer segments, covering buyers, renters, sellers, and homeowners
- Smaller specialty groups like fixer-upper shoppers and recent homeowners
- More than 200 real housing behavior signals pulled from how people search and browse on Zillow
Kohler ran the first pilot campaign, using Zillow’s Fixer-Upper Shoppers and Recent Homeowner Purchasers segments to build brand awareness on Pinterest.
The results:
- 82% more incremental reach compared with Kohler’s standard Pinterest campaigns
- A 23.54% engagement rate on video ads (Zillow’s headline rounds this up to 24%, so 23.54% is the number straight from the release text)
Brent Rosso, Zillow’s VP of Media Ad Strategy, described the thinking behind the deal in the announcement:
“Moving is one of the most significant life moments people experience, and it comes with a lot of planning and decision-making, much of which happens on Pinterest. This partnership allows us to extend our audience insights beyond Zillow to help brands connect with the right high-intent users on Pinterest.”
It’s a Data Play
Zillow now monetizes what it knows about consumers, on top of its usual leads and listings business.
Byron connects this to a bigger pattern. The lawsuits and acquisitions swirling around how listings get presented all trace back to the same goal: protecting and monetizing data.
And he doesn’t mince words when he sums up who this deal serves once you strip away the marketing language:
“This is smart for Zillow to monetize all the data that they’ve built up. They have this huge platform. They’re going to monetize the data. All these lawsuits and acquisitions and [the] fight over how listings are presented, it’s all a data play so that they have the ability to do what Zillow is doing today, which is monetize the data.
“If you think they’re doing it for the agent, or the consumer, you’re kidding yourself. All of these companies are doing it to protect their shareholders…to bring in more revenue. They understand the data is the most valuable thing that they have.”
Why Zillow Has the Leverage
Portals often know someone is thinking about moving before an agent does. Byron stated:
“Portals usually know when consumers are thinking about moving before real estate agents do. Listen, you know what you ask ChatGPT in the middle of the night, what you’re asking Google on a day-to-day…you know the things that you’re asking them before you do research or take action on it.
“Same thing on a lot of the housing data. Zillow knows what homes people are viewing, and well before they take action on talking to an agent, going to an open house, what price points they’re searching.”
Byron also points to the distance between how many people visit Zillow and how many buy a home in a given year:
- 235 million average monthly users on Zillow
- Around 4 million existing home sale transactions in a year
The distance between visitors and buyers is huge, and it’s why Byron thinks Zillow has every incentive to keep finding new ways to make money from all that traffic.
“235 million average unique monthly users on the platform, and we know that there’s only 4 million existing home sale transactions in a year. So…people are thinking about renovations. People are thinking about a future investment. Should I rent? Should I buy? All these different things. And there are a lot of other ways to make money on this data than just connecting an agent.”
Where Agents Still Have the Edge
This doesn’t change what separates real estate agents from what AI or mega entities like Zillow bring to the table.
What’s different is how much competition there is for a person’s attention, before they ever call an agent and after they close.
One thing this kind of data can’t replace is local trust. An agent with a real relationship with a contractor, someone they know from their kid’s school or the local chamber of commerce, can vouch for that person and hold them accountable in a way no platform can.
Byron gets right to the point:
“For you, for your business, nobody…can replace your ability to multiply your conversations in your community. Real estate agents, you will have to have at every single level of growing this business, whether you’re at the broker level or the executive level…your ability to have more conversations than your competitors is your separation point.
“And conversations that, obviously to use Zillow’s word, elevate the experience with the people that you’re managing or…customers that you’re trying to convert. You got to be talking all day long. And that’s never going to go away.”
Nicole added this to drive home the importance of knowing how Zillow Elevate and its partnerships with Pinterest (and others to come) impacts the people you serve:
“Use the tool and see how the experience is for you as a consumer. And I think that that’s going to be the same for this whole Elevate, too—see who is advertising on there and, if you don’t have a network, maybe that’s a decent place for you to start. But you should at least know who is going to be on that platform because chances are, if you’re not recommending a painter or if you are recommending a painter, they may be utilizing that recommendation, too…
“I think it’ll just help solidify who you are in the community and that you really are concerned about making sure that they have the best experience, too.”
Zillow’s ad business keeps growing, and knowing where it’s headed is useful for any agent building a marketing plan.
Watch for Elevate Audiences when it launches on-site in September. Pay attention to which brands start advertising in your market, on the platforms your own clients use every day.
