CollegeClassifieds.com launches, Targets US College Campuses and College Newspapers

CollegeClassifieds.com announces the official launch of its free classified listing service, targeting U.S. college campuses. Each listing can include up to four pictures, includes automatic Rapleaf.com ratings on each advertiser, and can be targeted to one or many college campuses at the time of placement. Listings are syndicated to additional on line outlets, providing a single source method of reaching college communities through text advertising. Listings are open to the public and also pulled from select college newspapers.

CollegeClassifieds.com provides a comparison chart on the site under the heading "WHY" to inform users of what the company views as the advantages of its service. Among the benefits the company touts are "human reviewed" listings and advertiser replies, opt-in SMS notifications of replies to listings, content syndication, personal search history, advertiser identity verification via SMS, as well as advertiser and user geo-location data reporting. If a listing includes pictures, CollegeClassifieds.com provides a dynamically generated ".zip" package of the ad, campus targets, all associated pictures and the advertisers' RapLeaf.com rating. The package can be downloaded to the desktop for future reference.

A unique feature of CollegeClassifieds.com is its per state, per campus, and per category RSS feed system. Readers can obtain RSS feeds for any state, campus, or category with a single click. If a college student is looking for an apartment near campus, she can set up an RSS feed listing only the "for rent" category of ads and for just her college campus. The company believes that this kind of targeted reach will set it apart from the pack.

CollegeClassifieds.com also makes available per ad statistics, something not previously seen on a free listing service. For each ad, the reader can determine the relevancy of the ad by judging the number of times the ad has been shown to users, how often it is listed in site searches and by how many replies have been posted and how many problems have been reported. Unlike other listing services, CollegeClassifieds.com makes each complaint public, after review by a site administrator. As with other listing services, CollegeClassifieds.com allows users to flag listings in the wrong category, or those listings of questionable content.

Speaking about the site, CEO Derrick Peavy emphasized that advertisers and readers of CollegeClassifieds.com will find the content to be more relevant to their needs than any other college targeted listing service available today. "Everyone is throwing around the term ‘hyper local' these days. What does that really mean? If your content can be targeted to only those people who need it, then you have 100% relevancy. ‘Hyper local' is simply another way to say ‘what I need and only what I need.' In our context, ‘hyper local' is yesterday. We enforce relevancy with strict category selection and campus targeting. There is no need to be ‘hyper local' when you can be exact."

"Our emphasis here is trust, honesty, accurate targeting and relevancy," Peavy stated. "We don't allow duplicate listings on the site to be listed in the same category and we don't allow other services to use our property as a marketing pad by posting hundreds of times in an effort to generate their own traffic. If we see that, we pull it down." The company believes this will increase the relevancy of each listing and thus the effectiveness of the service.

Advertisers may also be interested in some of the unique applications of the site's geo-location system. "When a reply is posted to any ad, the reply is first viewed in context of other replies from the same person," stated Peavy. "We look at where the reply is coming from and we show that to the advertiser. So when you get a reply to your ad, you can determine the intent of the reader and if it's right for you."

CollegeClassifieds.com will also provide impression based ad upgrades. By utilizing the soon to be announced option, users can elect to upgrade free listings to paid, per impression and per click based listings which are then given preference in searches and in category listings.

Recent trends continue to demonstrate that advertisers are moving away from paid newspaper classified listings and are increasingly using free on line listing services. In discussing this, Peavy commented on the company's relationships with college newspapers, "This service is designed from the ground up to be a compliment to college newspapers if they choose to participate and several have. Our goal is to effectively split proceeds with campus newspapers if they choose to partner with CollegeClassifieds.com. This can increase traffic to their own site as well as answer many challenging revenue questions they currently face."