When a user searches for real estate in a certain location on Trulia, Placecast adds its magic, using algorithms that add demographic, psychographic and geographic data points to the equation. The result, ideally, is a very precisely targeted advertisement. Or, as Alistair Goodman, CEO of Placecast, says: "Once we know the place a user is interested in, we can derive a lot of useful insights about what kind of consumer they are, and then serve them a very targeted ad."
Car rental company Avis-Budget is already participating in the program, and according to Trulia, their ads on the site perform "strongly relative to other publishers."
This summer, Trulia raised $15 million to expand their advertising network. It's nice to see them putting the money to good use after only three months, but the real estate business is not the best to be in right now, and their diminishing traffic (according to Compete) proves this. Still, if Trulia's hyper-localized approach to delivering ads works, and if their ads perform significantly better than the industry average, it'll be money well spent.