The Australian Financial Review took a big swipe at the Telstra owned Just Listed on in its Marketing & Media section on Monday (June 27). In this page 47 article Neil Shoebridge reports with glee the difficulties facing the the Just Listed newspaper. He also reports on the challenges and failure across at News Ltd with their Moving On Up product and at Homebound from Federal Publishing Company. In the same article Shoebridge reports on the success of his company’s own Domain East and Domain North products.
Fairfax used to own newspaper advertising and, in particular, classified advertising in Australia. It has stood by and watch while others have chipped away at the Fairfax rivers of gold. realestate.com.au, seek.com.au, tradingpost.com.au and a host of smaller websites have siphoned water out of the Fairfax river.
Classified advertising is very much in play in Australia with Craigslist starting to gain traction and a new site. monkey.com.au getting interest.
We don’t have the depth of players the US marketplace has in the classified space. But it’s only a matter of time. It’s a space to watch this year. With eBay, Google and Yahoo playing we have to expect greater pressure from online plays.
Consumers are looking for better value propositions than newspaper publisher controlled outlets currently offer. With more people purchasing using their mobile phones and paying cents for what they used to pay dollars for, it is only a matter of time before we experience a significant shift in the cost of advertising, particularly classified advertising.