Young & Laramore | Agency Profile, Contacts, AOR, Client Relationships

See Winmo sales intelligence in action

Digital Opps: Angie's List rebrands as one-stop home improvement shop

Angie's List (AL) is fully rebranding to Angi focus on how it partners with consumers on their homeownership journeys. This company provides lists of professionals but also provides additional housing-related services such as HomeAdvisor and gig economy marketplace Handy. Angi is now honing in on all aspects of home improvement, offering customers the chance to easily find, book and pay contractors - not just providing a place to review those contractors, as the name "Angie's List" suggests.

This shift comes as a result of coronavirus-related surges in demand for Angi's services. Since so many people have been stuck at home, they have looked to improve their residences or even move to new homes. Shares of Angi have soared around 250% within the past 12 months.

Now that these consumers are looking to travel more with the help of the vaccines and a reopening economy, Angi's leadership doesn't think the broader trend of home improvements will change.

Execs reported in the company's latest earnings call that marketing is among their top priorities in order to grow the business. These leaders "see a big opportunity to increase our marketing spend, particularly on mobile." Angi's focus on analytics and customization is also growing.

I also expect marketing spend to rise in order to promote the company's new branding; as you can see in the video above, Angi has already released work doing so.

According to iSpot, the company hasn't utilized national TV since spending around $3.6m in H1 2020; its commercials targeted Gen-X and boomers viewing programs such as Tucker Carlson Tonight, Hannity, CNN Right Now With Brianna, Keilar, Walker, Texas Ranger and NCIS: Los Angeles. Angi spent around $33m on this channel in 2019.

So far this year, Pathmatics reports the company has allocated roughly $653.9k toward digital ads; this marks a 3x increase from the roughly $233.8k it allocated in the same 2020 timeframe and a third of the roughly $2.9k it allocated in all of 2020. Angi's estimated 2020 spend more than doubled to $2.9k from that of $927.5k in 2019. It has earned ~57.4m digital impressions YTD via desktop display (90%), Facebook (9%) and Instagram (1%) ads. All of its desktop display ads of 2021 have been placed site direct onto nextdoor.com.

Additionally, Magellan reveals Angi has aired five podcast ads within the past 12 months.

As you can see, higher digital ad spend has at least partially been made possible by lower TV spend. Judging by this sharp increase in digital spend and reliance of nextdoor.com ads, Angi is particularly targeting Gen-Z and millennials. In the past, we've reported that Nextdoor primarily targets Gen-Z and millennials. To do so, Angi may also invest in OTT advertising. It especially targets contractors, home improvement companies, homeowners and landlords. Per Kantar, it additionally invests in radio and local broadcast. The company holds planning conversations in Q2 and buying conversations in Q1.

Agency & martech readers - Angi may seek new agency partners as a result of this rebranding effort; it wouldn't hurt to reach out. The company stopped working with former creative AOR Arnold Digitas IL (media buying and planning, digital).