The Business of Extraordinary Living microsite on The Wall Street Journal’s Web site, wallstreetjournal.com/sothebysrealty, kicked off the summer on a high note (all data as of June 2009):
· On the Real Estate section of WSJ.com there were 1,154,395 times when one of the network’s listings were served up (made the searched criteria) for a user searching for property and 100,780 times those users went off to view a specific Sotheby’s International Realty® property that came up in one of those searches, which equates to a click through rate (CTR) of 8.73%! This is three times greater than before the program was launched. The 728×90 ads we place that rotate on the real estate section had a CTR of 0.65%, an outstanding number!
· The overall banner campaign (where ads are run to drive traffic to sothebysrealty.com) had its highest monthly CTR rate to date of 0.33%. The industry normal and WSJ.com normal is 0.1%! This strong CTR can be attributed to the showcasing of the brand’s best asset – extraordinary property.
· Time spent on the microsite was at its highest: 4 minutes and 45 seconds.
· As content is being archived to the site, there is continued and growing readership to this section.
· In June, the “ski ad” creative continued to pull the highest CTR rates, often as much as double! New creative was incorporated in July to bring value to additional properties, agents and homeowners. Early data suggests that the “country” and “mountain” ads now are providing the highest CTRs.
· The Brand was the top visited section in June. Early July data indicates Living had the highest number of page views, followed in order by Insights, The Address and The Brand.
· In related news, year-over-year (June-to-June) traffic to sothebysrealty.com is up 26%.
