“Zillow has about a 5 percent wallet share of what agents spend on advertising,” said Zillow Group CEO Spencer Rascoff in an investor call held at 5 p.m. EDT on Tuesday.
“We ought to be able to increase that quite significantly in the next several years,” he added.
Expanding real estate advertising business is one of four top priorities for Zillow Group this year, said Rascoff.
Zillow Group reported that 63 percent of new advertising sales booked in the first quarter of 2015 represented existing agent advertisers who were purchasing more impressions.
Chad Cohen, Zillow Group’s chief financial officer, also reported a 20 percent overlap between Zillow and Trulia advertisers and an average revenue per advertiser of $354 in this year’s first quarter. The total number of agent advertisers (representing both Zillow and Trulia advertisers) was reported as 103,415.
Overall, the company’s financials appeared robust and healthy, with a GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) total first-quarter 2015 revenue of $127.3 million.
That includes $6.1 million in revenue since the Zillow-Trulia merger from Trulia’s Market Leader. The pro forma revenue results, which are adjusted as though Zillow acquired Trulia in January 2014 instead of February 2015 in order to provide a more comparable year-over-year analysis, report Market Leader revenue at $13.6 million in first-quarter 2015 — down 11 percent from $15.3 million in first-quarter 2014.
Cohen said that Market Leader was one of the “primary drivers of the softening in revenue.”
Cohen also said that Zillow Group would be focusing on Market Leader operations and “evaluating its place.”
Industry insiders tell Inman that company support for the product has been trimmed by Zillow Group and that many of its customers are on the hunt for alternatives. Rascoff has also consistently stated that the online real estate company is a media firm, not an enterprise software company.
On the investor call, Rascoff said that the company is “on track to meet pro forma goals” and will focus on four priorities this year: extracting “significant benefits” from the Trulia acquisition; growing the Zillow Group audience; growing the real estate advertising business; and growing emerging marketplaces.
Rascoff estimated the firm will spend approximately $100 million this year to grow its audience.
Zillow Group sent the following table in a press release preceding the investor call; the table summarizes Zillow Group’s consolidated first-quarter actual results and the analyst consensus estimates:
| Analyst Consensus Estimates | |||
| First quarter of 2015 | Zillow Group | Bloomberg | FactSet |
| Total revenue | $127.3 mil | $129.1 mil | $127.8 mil |
| Adjusted EBITDA | $16.7 mil | $8.1 mil | $8.2 mil |
| Non-GAAP net income per share (diluted) | $0.05 | ($0.12) | ($0.11) |
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct a quote misattributed to R.J. Jones; Spencer Rascoff made the statement. Industry insider information has also been added.