Your portal spend is doing less work than you think | June 2026

Each month, we share what we’re seeing across property campaigns nationally. June has brought some interesting conversations around portals, end-of-project campaigns, and the creative formats that are quietly shifting performance. Here’s what’s worth knowing.

One of the most common questions we field from property clients is about portals: REA vs the rest, whether to be on multiple platforms, and whether the spend justifies the result.

Our current position, based on active campaigns: if you’re only going to be on one portal, REA is still the stronger performer for most project types. But the more important conversation is whether portal spend makes sense in the first place.

Here’s what we’re observing: a significant portion of leads generated via Domain and Apartments.com.au are coming from buyers who already searched for the project by name or address. That intent already exists. Those buyers would have found you via your own website or a direct Google search, essentially for free. You’re paying to intercept traffic that was already coming your way.

For projects without strong organic or brand search presence, portal exposure can still add value. But for established or well-promoted projects, that portal budget is often better deployed into Meta campaigns targeting audiences who don’t know you yet + retargeting campaigns to continue to keep leads warm.

The test we recommend: pull your portal analytics and filter for traffic driven by direct project name or address searches. If that’s a high proportion of your portal enquiry, you’re paying a premium to do what Google is already doing organically.

A conversation we’ve been having this month is around how to structure campaigns for projects that are close to sold out, a handful of stock remaining, limited variety left, and a developer wanting to close the project cleanly.

The mistake most teams make at this point is running the same volume-focused campaign that worked earlier in the project. That approach worked when you needed 50 leads. You don’t need 50 leads anymore. You need two or three.

When you’re down to the last stock, the campaign should be tight, targeted, and explicitly leveraging scarcity. Audience should shift to warm retargeting, people who’ve engaged with the project but haven’t converted. Creative should reflect urgency without manufactured panic: “limited residences remaining” is more credible than countdown timers and red banners.

KPIs change entirely at this stage. You’re no longer optimising for CPL. You’re optimising for cost per qualified inspection and cost per contract. Lead volume is almost irrelevant.

One practical shift: at sell-down stage, we often recommend pausing broad Meta acquisition and concentrating budget on retargeting and database reactivation. Reaching out to your existing lead list with fresh messaging. These people already know the project. The cost to reactivate them is a fraction of acquiring a new cold lead.

A format we’re seeing strong results from right now in property campaigns is what we’re calling article-style ads. Not a polished render with a logo. Not a construction photo with a CTA. An ad that looks and reads like an editorial piece of content.

Think: a single strong image, an interior, a neighbourhood shot, a lifestyle moment, with a headline that reads like a publication rather than an ad. “The building reshaping what $900K buys in [suburb]” or “Why buyers are looking past the city for their next investment.” A byline. A short paragraph. A link that feels like “read more” rather than “enquire now.”

Why it works: it bypasses the mental filter people apply to obvious property ads. It builds credibility through editorial framing and a trusted source (Local Project, Design Files etc). And it works especially well for high-value or complex projects where buyers need to build trust before they’re ready to enquire.

From a campaign we’re currently running for a prestige project, the article-style format is generating the highest volume of leads, and has the highest click-to-lead submission rate.

This format takes more thought to build correctly. The image selection, the headline framing, and the landing page experience all need to support the editorial feel. But for the right project, it’s worth the investment.

• Review your portal spend against your organic and direct search data. If buyers are finding you via project name search, you may be duplicating spend across portals and owned channels. Run the analytics check before your next portal renewal.
• If you’re in sell-down mode, restructure the campaign. Pause broad acquisition. Concentrate budget on retargeting and database reactivation. Shift your KPIs from CPL to cost per qualified inspection.
• Test an article-style ad format. Pick one project. Brief a headline in editorial style and an image that tells a story. Run it for three weeks and compare lead quality against your standard creative.

As always, happy to share what we’re seeing across the market. No pitch, just data.