How powerful are online classifieds?
Last year, the local online ad market in the US was about $3.2 billion, which is projected to reach about $5.3 billion by the end of the decade, according to a report by JupiterResearch last year. Of this, a whopping 70% was supposed to be from local classfieds. That’s a serious spend.
The reason I mention online classifieds now is that classfied sites seem to be sprouting everywhere; most of them free for advertisers. The monetization of these sites seems to be from programs such as AdSense or paid-for enhanced listings, but by offering it for free to advertisers, they certainly manage to attract a lot of traction from advertisers (though I must say, many listings are created simply to create search engine visibility).
There’s even a search engine specializing in showing results from classifieds — Oodle, which has now extended its services to the UK.
Seems like an interesting channel to try out for affiiiate marketing and see if these work to drive traffic to affiliate publisher websites.
