Dear God:
The chief executive of Fairfax Media-owned real estate advertising business Domain has revealed intentions to expand into potentially lucrative financial services operations, as investors look for growth strategies after an upcoming float.
Speaking on a panel on the smart use of data at The Australian Financial Review Business Summit on Wednesday, Domain boss Antony Catalano flagged the potential for the company to dig deeper into the information it generates and tracks on house sellers or buyers in order to establish new mortgage and insurance businesses.
Mr Catalano outlined a theoretical example of Domain providing leads to mortgage and insurance providers based on house sales, something he said could dramatically raise the value of individual existing listings.
“We have got so many data points that allow us to move out of being just a classified advertising business, into perhaps being a mortgage or insurance originator,” Mr Catalano said.
“Our business generates about $500 per property. If I can provide a bank with a loan … there can be 10 times as much money in being a mortgage originator than there is in the advertising business.”
Domain is already eating Fairfax publishing businesses alive as it grows and all else shrinks. We all know what that has done to Fairfax editorial as it turns inexorably into realty-stroking Flufferfax.
The kind of evolution mooted here can only accelerate the process as its old media model dies and Domainfax becomes little more than a sprawling property industry vertical. Editorial already mostly reflects these revenue streams and is dedicated not to the vitality of a diverse economic ecosystem but to the mass production of ‘Domainfaxman’, the dim-witted, trivia-marinated specufestor that perpetuates its own business model. Via this sociological rent-seeking, Domainfax is now one of the single most toxic firms in the political economy.
Let’s hope that the business model collapses with the next global shock and that the mastheads are sold to foreign interests that sustain liberal values with greater commitment than present management.
