In the never-ending game of getting advertisers’ money, the internet is still small potatoes, collecting only about three of every 100 dollars spent. But when the total amount of money spent on advertising is so big, even that small slice can be pretty substantial. In Ireland, the total advertising spend is €1.37 billion, and that still leaves about €40 million for Irish internet advert sellers. Daft.ie is fighting for its slice of that pie.
Daft.ie is a property listing website, started by two brothers, Eamonn and Brian Fallon, in 1997. In the past seven years, they have built their business to become, as they say, “synonymous with renting property in Ireland”. With over 13,000 properties available for sale or let, their claim just might be true.
Francesca Fontini, 28, from Italy, is typical of Daft’s users. “It’s so much easier than searching through old newspapers for a flat, and especially when you’re away from Dublin and trying to find a place to come to, it’s essential.” Daft has received quite a bit of well deserved praise for its services. Earlier this year, it scooped both the Outstanding Small Business of Year award from the Small Firms Association and the Digital Media Brand of the Year at the Digital Media Awards.
Daft prices its advertising on a per-listing basis, effectively offering a flat rate to property owners regardless of how effective their advertising is. The current trend in internet advertising however, according to industry reports and knowledgeable consultants, is towards performance-based contracts, in which the advertiser pays per mouse-click, contact, sale, or in this case, apartment rental. This type of advertising, famously used by Google and others, accounted for 21 per cent of all internet advertising in 2003. In 2004, it was up to 37 per cent, and continues to rise.
Moving to a performance-based model would almost make Daft a partner of the renting landlords, a position it seems to be strengthening with its Daft Property Report. This report is aimed at aiding landlords and first-time buyers with an accurate picture of the rental market, and details average rental prices in each Dublin area and for the country as a whole. Their search for company growth is also pushing them towards courting home buyers rather than renters.
Daft has expanded to the point that most of its traffic is now from people buying their first home. This expansion was almost inevitable for a successful Irish property-related company, as the growth in the Irish property market is not coming from renters, but home sales. Ireland is a nation of home owners, not renters, with about 78 per cent of households living in their own homes. This is one of the highest rates in the EU, and a brick wall for any company specializing in the rental market.
Moving in this direction puts Daft in head-to-head competition with the national and regional newspapers for the coveted advertising money from home sales. Property advertising accounts for a massive percentage of the nationals’ revenues, and has sustained them through the advertising downturn of the past few years.
How Daft fares in the next few years with a new set of competitors will be interesting to see. The past successes are without question. The future success remains to be seen.
Did you hear that wrong? Deft.ie is another small Irish firm, started by two brothers Jason and Ian Keane in 1998. Deft provides professional computers services, specializing in desktop deployment, Windows servers, clustering services and firewall security protection.
The firm has grown over the past seven years from a one-man operation in a DCU dorm room to a €1.2m company with seven employees. That certainly took some pretty deft moves.
Jason explains how they came up with their company name: “The meaning of the name Deft actually is dexterous, highly skilled. But this is bollocks; I came up with it one night out with a mate of mine on the beer. We were arguing about a name for the company and had all crap names like ‘Jason’s Consulting’, ‘JPS’ or ‘Jason’s Professional Services’, which all sounded terrible.
“Out of the blue my mate Tony asked what will I be doing and I couldn’t answer him. I said ‘A little of this, maybe something of the other’, then he said ‘sounds like you’re going to be doing every fucking thing going. Well there you have it — D.E.F.T. (Does Every Fucking Thing)’. Apparently he heard this somewhere else for some product. Well it sounded great after too many beers and the name was registered. Officially it means dexterous, though.”
They don’t use internet advertising like Daft.ie but simply have Deft.ie as a place-holder for their business. “What’s interesting is the amount of hits we get on the site of people looking for Daft.ie. How do we know this? We get mail (you can click on a link to send us a mail) looking for the houses to rent/buy listings!”