Can newspaper companies make money on real estate advertising? What an odd question, at least for Axel Konjack, CEO of Immonet GmbH, a German real estate portal owned by Axel Springer! He just told me on the phone that Immonet is a real money-maker for Axel Springer, outperforming its printed newspapers: “Immonet earned more than one third in revenue on real estate classifieds in 2008 compared to all the newspapers of the group together. And as a group our revenue on real estate classifieds in 2008 was bigger than back in 2006, so we’ve more than made-up the losses in print.”

And not only revenue is improving. Immonet got into the black in Q4 2008 for the first time in its history. And Konjack is very optimistic about further growth: “There are still so many opportunities in this vibrant environment. We have tons of projects we want to realize, Immonet has brilliant perspectives.”

Immonet is one of the Top 3 real estate portals in Germany. It’s most important rivals are ImmobilienScout24 (owned by the Scout24 group) and Immowelt AG (owned by Markt.gruppe), in most studies ImmoNet is listed as No. 2. Each of the portals has its strenghts in different market segments. Immonet has been able to grow its market share during the last years. Both Immonet and Immowelt invested in marketing campaigns recently.

Some of the successful new features Immonet has implemented since it started its big growth initiative back in 2006 have been inspired by international best practices. Other innovations don’t seem to work on the German market, according to Konjack.

This raises an interesting question in my view: Is it possible to predict which new and interesting international developments in real estate or jobs or whichever classified category will work in your own market? Are there any measures that can help decision making? Would really love to know…

UPDATE 23. April 2009:

The numbers Axel Konjack shared with us were also shown at Axel Springer’s Annual Shareholder’s meeting that took place 23. April 2009 in Berlin.

You can download the English language presentation here: http://www.axelspringer.de/dl/120930/09-04-16_HV_Praesentation_engl.pdf

If you’d like to hear Immonet’s German radio spots that can be rated and searched by users have a look at: http://www.immonet-nachrichten.de/