OnTheMarket claims 10m visits and 2,500 firms

OnTheMarket claims it has achieved 10 million visits to the site with 90 million page views in three months.

The portal launched on January 26 and it says in April alone it received 3.5m visits with an average of 9.31 pages viewed and an average of 6.5 minutes spent on the site by each user. 

The portal admitted that it is “focused on attracting currently active property-seekers who are likely to represent a fraction of the total traffic to more established portals.”

OnTheMarket - which has had a series of spats with Zoopla over traffic figures - says it uses Google Analytics for its latest visits claim. OTM says it has recruited more than 800 estate and letting agent offices this year alone and now has a membership of more than 5,000 offices representing more than 2,500 firms.

OTM also says its TV advert has been aired more than 5,000 times and watched by 44.8 million people. Some 100 press adverts have run and its online adverts have generated around 155m and its our pay-per-click campaign has delivered some 55m more. 

“We are confident in becoming the number two property portal by the end of January, 2016 on our way to achieving our medium term objective of becoming the market leader.” says OTM chief executive Ian Springett.

Zoopla Property Group’s communications chief Lawrence Hall, however, says OTM’s three-month visitor total is only the same as ZPG averages every six days even though the new portal “is broadly charging the same advertising rates as ZPG.”

He claims this means agents advertising on OTM are paying at least 15 times the market rate for their digital marketing. 

“This is not sustainable for those businesses to remain competitive.Given that OTM audience figures were flat from March to April and would need to grow by at least 15 times over the next eight months to meet their prediction of catching ZPG, perhaps they should look at charging their members a fairer monthly rate of around £10” he says.