Comcast Redefines Home Shopping Network
Million-ton media gorilla Comcast has rolled out an interactive real estate shopping channel on its On-Demand network in Portland (one of only a handful of markets nationwide), where you can plop down in your Barcalounger to channel surf up to 3,000 property listings each week.
If you have Comcast On-Demand service, check out channel 888, and look for the Real Estate section. Homes for sale in the Portland metro area are sorted by area and price range. Make a selection and sit back while a 15-second spot for each listing appears. Every listing gets 3 digital photos treated with the Ken Burns effect, plus a text-to-speech narration of the agent’s comments to complete the video advertisement. Each segment lasts 7 minutes for a total of 20 - 28 listings per segment.
A local company, HouseInDemand.com is the exclusive Portland-area agent for selling these ads. I daresay they are going to be raking it in as agents look for new cost-effective, digital means to market their listings. I haven’t used it yet but HouseInDemand’s listing templates has made the process verrrry easy from what I can tell, so even technophobe agents should be able to create their ads effectively.
HouseInDemand claims over 25,000 viewers during just its second week of operation. (The On-Demand client base in the Portland area is approximately 400,000 viewers.) I suspect some of this traffic is due to the ‘looky-lou’ factor and their advertising blitz. For the next week, I would expect to see a fair bit of the Buena Vista inventory getting some pre-auction promotion.
For agents, it’s a relatively affordable advertising outlet—just $115 per week for ‘TV advertising’, arguably a better deal than pouring well over $100 into a one-shot, 4-line Open House ad in the Sunday Oregonian. But it won’t reach non-cable broadcast viewers, alternate cable provider or Dish/Direct subscribers.
So, I’m a DISH subscriber and haven’t used the Comcast On-Demand service. Has anyone out there seen Channel 888, and do you think homebuyers will use it to shop for a new house?
Is it Comcastic or merely bombastic?
Technorati Tags: Portland, Oregon, homes, houses, marketing, advertising, Comcast, cable, on demand, real estate
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5 comments December 10th, 2007
