The Growing Online Classifieds Market

Whether individuals or businesses are looking for a used car, a new employee, or a date for Friday night, their first stop is increasingly becoming the Internet. In 1999, the market for online classified advertising was US$300 million. This number grew to US$2.1 billion in 2002 and is continuing to grow, with recent estimates putting it at approximately US$6 billion. While online classifieds accounted for only 1% of the overall classifieds market in 1999, that number grew to over 6% by 2002 and is now estimated to be close to 10%.

Online classifieds have many significant advantages over their traditional print counterparts, including the following:

• Convenience and ease of use
• Powerful search and "my checklist" capabilities for marking ads for future retrieval
• More personalized "push" services such as automatic ad alerts
• More timely and up-to-date listings
• User-friendly tools and features such as photos, video, and sound clips in online ads

Some of the greatest growth will be in the following sectors:

• Real Estate - online real estate advertising totalled approximately US$1.8 billion in 2005
• Employment - online recruitment advertising totalled approximately US$1.5 billion in 2005
• Automotive - online automotive advertising grew to US$1.2 billion in 2004
• Personals - the online dating market totalled approximately US$500 million in 2005
• Business-to-Business - web sites that enable transactions between one business and another
• Niche markets - classifieds that target niches as diverse as small business owners, seniors personals, skaters in NYC, and hobbyists of all types
• Global markets - online classifieds in countries that traditionally have had a few dominant newspapers that controlled most of the classified advertising

Learn more about the benefits of adding e-Classifieds to your web site. Please follow the links along the left side of the screen to learn more about the e-Classifieds product line. You can also view a brief summary chart that shows the features, prices, and supported platforms for each of our offerings.