News Corp is ready to slingshot Realtor.com back to the top of the portal heap, this time with artificial intelligence fueling growth.
The conglomerate’s CEO, Robert Thomson, gave a peek into his playbook at the Goldman Sachs Conference on Monday, saying that News Corp has a data treasure chest filled with invaluable insights from its Dow Jones, Digital Real Estate Services, Book Publishing and News Media segments that will yield a decisive advantage over its competitors.
Robert Thomson
“Ultimately, the world of AI is dependent on the quality of content inputs. Garbage in, garbage out remains the prevailing principle,” he said. “At the moment, a lot of the focus of investment is on energy generation, data centers, and chips.”
“All the AI companies are going to need quality and immediacy in content because, by definition, AI experiences are retrospective. They are based on previously input content,” he added. “How do you make sure that your content sets are contemporary? That’s where, across a lot of our businesses, we have a comparable advantage.”
Thomson said AI is a vital growth lever for Realtor.com and its parent company, Move Inc., which is steadily working its way out of a rut in website traffic and lead volume, mirroring the overall sales environment.
Realtor.com’s traffic dropped 3 percent year over year to 72 million during the second quarter; however, June visits to the site reached 256 million — signaling that a complete rebound is ahead, the company said in August.
“On digital real estate, [there’s a] real ability for us to personalize in a way that is unimaginable compared to the experience that people have now,” he said. “We’re in discussion with OpenAI about how, for example, with Realtor.com, what more can we do there to ensure that it’s a unique experience, it’s a comprehensive experience, but ultimately that it’s a compelling experience?”
The News Corp CEO said OpenAI founder Sam Altman is invested in how ChatGPT can revolutionize the home search experience, as the companies work through the first stages of their multi-year content partnership signed in May 2024.
“Both Sam [Altman] and I are deeply into property, and from a personal reading perspective,” Thomson said. “I think there’s a certain empathy there that will play out among the two companies as we evolve the discussions. It’s not a finished product yet, [we’re in] early-stage discussions.”
“I think on both sides, we have a real sense of opportunity there to create, one, to enable Realtor.com to become number one in the U.S., and two, and most importantly, and it’s related clearly, to ensure that users of our material have the most efficacious experience possible,” he added.
Damian Eales | Credit: Realtor.com
Realtor.com CEO Damian Eales revealed the other half of the growth plan at Inman Connect San Diego in July, saying that the portal is focused on better leveraging its journalism arm to build trust with consumers and fostering a truly open marketplace.
“I think this is really important in a competitive context, and I’m not criticizing the Zillows, the Rockets, and the Redfins of the world. They’re just attacking it differently. They are closing their marketplaces,” he said. “You know the reality is that Zillow is selling its leads, its audience, to fewer and fewer customers. They’re closing it down. The reality is that they’re selling more and more of those customers their mortgage [product].”
“I think we’ve already seen it with Rocket’s acquisition of Redfin. It’s one broker and it’s one mortgage … It’s a different business strategy,” Eales added. “But my business strategy is to be a genuinely open marketplace. We want to support buyers and sellers, buyer agents and listing agents. We want to be the open marketplace for mortgage, for title, for other services. That’s what differentiates us.”
