Google Marches on Real Estate Classifieds

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According to an artile by Steve Outing for Poynter, Google has three sales divisions actively pitching big players in real estate in a bid to woo ad $$$'s away from traditional classifieds media, and into Adwords.

a key point is how dominant the search engines (especially Google) are becoming in attracting local real estate advertising money. Borrell notes how Google has begun pursuing the real estate category directly, now employing three regional sales teams in the U.S. that are focused on the real estate and other classifieds categories. The search giant has been making presentations to major brokerage firms such as Century 21, RE/MAX, and Coldwell Banker, Borrell reports.
Those real estate companies are buying advertising as part of Google's AdWords and AdSense programs, where they pay per click, and they're bidding up keywords to $1 per click, and $2 in some cities. A growing segment of these bidders are local advertisers

As Greg point out, this is part of a larger trend in classifieds. The move out of Traditional media, and into such things as Craigslist and Adwords is (from what i read), a steady progression which is surely hurting the newspaper industry.