Safe and Sound Data
Luke Glass, Executive Vice President of Industry Platforms, ListHub
MP: Luke, you founded ListHub, a primary vehicle many brokers use to distribute listings to multiple websites. As a result, I am sure you get into the center of what, at times, are passionate discussions on how broker data is displayed and used. What kind of support do you offer to brokers so that they can control how their listings are treated?
Luke Glass: First, brokers are in control. They control every aspect of listing distribution in the ListHub platform, and have the authority to give certain controls to their agents if they so desire. This is a differentiation from our competitors who allow agents to syndicate through various means. The industry continues to deal with accuracy issues because of the hundreds of feeds that are being used to distribute data to third-party advertising sites.
ListHub is focused on accuracy and data protection. ListHub primarily accesses data from our MLS partners, and in some cases, back-end systems of large brokerages or franchises. If you’re using ListHub, the data is accurate. In most months, we have less than 150 support cases related to accuracy, while we syndicate over two million listings per day to over 130 destinations. As it relates to data protection, ListHub has negotiated with each publisher the data protection that the industry has requested of us. We outline all of those protections at www.listhubnews.com/mlsguide. ListHub has set the standard in data protection for listing content.
No company has provided more tools and training for brokers to make informed decisions on their listing distribution strategy…everything from broker ratings to detailed screenshots of how the data is displayed on specific sites. We believe there’s still a lot of room for more education, which is why we recently launched our Wise Advertise program. Wise Advertise is a complete program that begins with surveying members to understand their level of knowledge and then moves into intensive training and exit surveys to understand the value of the training. It’s gaining amazing traction in only the first few weeks.
We’re really excited that nearly 2,300 brokers joined the platform in Q1 2014 and over 35 MLSs. This not only represents growth, but accelerating growth—it’s the fastest broker growth rate in over a year. We also announced our partnership with SEI to add 100 MLSs over the next year.
MP: How do you view the exchange of value between the brokers who provide listing content and the third-party advertising sites?
LG: I believe this is the most misunderstood part of the ListHub business. As advertising has moved online, it creates an opportunity for the industry to measure consumer engagement at levels not possible before. When a broker provides listing content to an advertising portal, they need to measure the results of that distribution, from search impressions to detail page views, to lead forms completed. They need to understand how their brokerage, agents and listings are performing online. The measurement of returns is a critical component in any advertising vertical.
ListHub provides an aggregated dashboard comparison of the third-party advertising portals, realtor.com®,
the broker website, and an MLS/Franchise website. Our vision is to track every single consumer behavior on every single website that a listing exists. While brokers can access reports from each site individually, the power of ListHub is the ability to see these metrics in an apples-to-apples comparison across sites, and ultimately create a single report for agents to share with sellers.
MP: How do you see ListHub evolving as the industry is looking at best practices for syndicating their data?
LG: The industry needs to view the issues around data as a collective problem. ListHub has grown because brokers saw a need, and over 50,000 brokers representing nearly 72 percent of the listings in the United States are on the platform. This provides the industry with an amazing foundation to create a single pipeline of data not only to third-party advertising sites, but to help the thousands of vendors who continue to deal with data anomalies across the industry.
Broker pain points around data cause delays in implementing new systems, higher data aggregation costs, and less interoperability among existing systems. A single platform for that broker solves their problems. ListHub will offer these brokers a single listing clearinghouse to power all of their data needs; a single metrics clearinghouse to store all of the associates metrics related to the distribution of those listings; and a lead clearinghouse to scrub, store, score and route those leads. This ecosystem will allow brokers to truly begin tracking ROI on their investments.
That’s where this gets interesting and most rewarding—giving brokers tools they themselves manage to increase results and return on investment.
