There is an online “for sale” sign on the Rogers Centre in Toronto thanks to its partnership with Zoocasa.com, a new online real estate search engine.
To promote the official launch of its site, Zoocasa created a mock listing for the 55,000-seat stadium in Toronto’s downtown core, as well as a video on YouTube.
That video advertised the venue (and Zoocasa’s service) to journalists assembled at a press event yesterday morning.
Touted as a waterfront “bachelor” apartment, the video jokingly sells the space as a one-bedroom with 400 bathrooms and a private shower for 40 people.
“The real charm of this property is you can host anything, from a small intimate gathering of your closest friends right up to a monster truck-themed get together, without having to rent any bridge chairs,” says the voiceover.
The media event was organized by LexPR, which Zoocasa hired as its public relations agency of record in July.
Zoocasa aggregates information about Canadian real estate opportunities from various online sources to connect home shoppers with real estate agents.
Visitors to the site can research neighborhoods for individual real estate listings provided by brokers. Information such as school proximity can also be displayed.
Real estate of another kind–advertising–is also available on the site, as the revenue model is ad-centric.
“We’re starting to get some significant increases in traffic,” said Butch Langlois, general manager. “So now it makes sense to begin selling advertising. One of the big components will be getting [real estate] agents excited about the service.”
Langlois said home buyers are a “high CPM market,” making banks, insurance companies and home improvement retailers ideal advertisers in addition to real estate agents.
“I want to keep a purity to it, keep the advertising contextually relevant,” he added.
Zoocasa is a subsidiary of Rogers Digital Media, which handles all ad sales for the site.
