It is difficult to speak about Zoopla without understanding the pressure it faces from both above and below. (View Highlight)
Above, the incumbent market leader Rightmove is (in)famous for its extraordinary success among the upper echelons of real estate portals worldwide. Below, the American-owned OnTheMarket (OTM), flush with billions in the bank, a long-term strategy, and a bullish CEO who hates losing.
According to Similarweb figures, Rightmove had 74.3 million web visits from November 8-December 8 2024. In the same period, Zoopla had 22.6 million views and OTM, 15 million. (View Highlight)
“Rightmove was the first portal out there in the UK and that shows through today in that it clearly the number one portal in the UK from a traffic perspective, from a brand recognition perspective, and in some areas, from a listing perspective, as well.
“OnTheMarket is a more recent entrant (publicly launched 2015) as an agent-owned challenger. Most of that was driven by the fact that agents wanted to have a hedge against potential fee increases from Rightmove and Zoopla. It didn’t really get traction in its ability to challenge either Rightmove or Zoopla, and this has been a fairly constant picture.
“Obviously that changed in 2023 when it was acquired by CoStar which has been successful in bringing in a number of agents through what Zoopla understands to be principally free offers. It’s also been working hard on digital marketing to get greater visibility with consumers.
“From our perspective, Rightmove remains a clear number one, Zoopla remains a clear number two, and quite some distance ahead of OTM. But there’s no question that there is a third challenger portal in town that now has more firepower behind it than the original OTM.” (View Highlight)
