For decades, Vendor Paid Advertising (VPA) in Australia was dominated by print. Newspaper spreads, glossy brochures, and magazine placements consumed the bulk of budgets, shaping how properties were presented to buyers. Today, those same budgets are being redirected. As print fades, digital has not just taken its place but reshaped the expectations of buyers and the behaviours of agents.
In the last twelve months, Australians spent an estimated $7.3 billion marketing their properties1. That number is staggering in its own right, but more telling is where it’s going.
Instead of being locked into press deadlines and page sizes, agents now have the freedom to allocate spend across a wider set of tools: professional photography, cinematic video, precise floor plans, copywriting, and tailored campaign strategies.
The purpose of VPA has never changed: to get buyers from browsing media to walking through the front door. What has changed is how that’s achieved.
The industry has moved away from quick 24-hour turnaround packages that delivered uniform results.
In their place, we’re seeing more deliberate and bespoke selections of media suppliers, chosen for their quality and ability to match campaign strategy.
As property values have increased, so too has the size and revenue of the industries supporting real estate. Every rise in median home price magnifies the stakes of a campaign.
With more at risk, agents and vendors are more willing to invest in high-quality marketing, knowing that strong presentation directly influences buyer engagement and final sale price.
This has elevated the profile of media suppliers across Australia, creating an industry that is both larger and more specialised than ever before.
For agents, the shift presents both challenge and opportunity.
The challenge is that “good enough” no longer cuts through.
The opportunity is that the decline of print has freed up a significant budget to reinvest in superior digital and visual outputs.
Vendors increasingly expect their properties to be marketed with precision, care, and creativity, and they are prepared to pay for it.
The resync of media supply across Australia is clear: campaigns are no longer about ticking boxes quickly, but about choosing partners who can deliver the right mix of quality and impact.
It’s not about how fast content can be delivered; it’s about whether that content is compelling enough to get buyers to click, enquire, and inspect.
That is the new standard of real estate marketing.
Whilst this trend has driven huge improvements in video, photography and other media, floor plans remain one of the most craved and most-viewed elements of any property campaign.
To see how FloorScape is helping agents elevate this part of their marketing, visit floorscape.au.
Footnote:
- This calculation is based on recent property sales volumes (around 670,000–730,000 annually, per PEXA and Savings.com.au) multiplied by the average VPA spend of roughly $7,500 per property. That gives a range of $3.5bn to $7.3bn, with $7.3bn being the higher end.
