I wanted to chime in with a quick word about our advertising specifications, and how we think about advertising on our site. This is pretty far from a manifesto, but it does reflect the belief that relevant ads are useful and desirable content.
As a general rule, we are all for anything that helps our users find the goods and services that are of interest to them. Whether turning to Realty Executives find out which homes are for sale in Arizona or to ING Direct to get a mortgage, we are happy to help our users find what they are looking for.
Zillow is very fortunate to have an intelligent, web-savvy user-base which is coming to the site to access tools and information to help them to make informed decisions. The great news is that you can access all of this information for free, and without submitting any personal information. Our relationship with our advertising partners is what makes this possible. It is pretty clear that people understand and respect that.
Over the long term, market forces do a great job of making sure that our ad placements are populated by advertisers who are interesting to our users. As for new, rich media advertising formats – we love seeing new things and are happy to work with advertisers to test new formats. Our principle concern is that the experience is controlled by our users. As long as our users are in control, we’re all for it.
P.S. – To those of you who were kind enough to point out our noisy ad last week, thank you for letting us know. It was not up to spec, and had been submitted and trafficked in error.
If you ever see anything else which seems out of place, please let us know. Thanks again for the heads up.