The kings of classified ads in Spain have long ceased to be general information newspapers, for which it was a big business. In the 90s, the well-known newspaper “classifieds” Second Hand was gaining market share among those who were looking for a television, a car or a tennis racket at reasonable prices and also for those who wanted to be the first to locate the best house to buy or rent. If you are fond of almost anything, surely you have bought a SegundaMano newspaper at the time to fuel your passion without spending too much money.
This model, based on a paper publication, underwent important changes with the popularization of the Internet. Segunda Mano made the leap to the Internet with great success and today it is part of the Schibsted Classified Media group in Spain together with InfoJobs.net, Fotocasa.es or Coches.net . This Norwegian group is also the owner of the newspaper 20Minutos. Together they receive more than 77 million visits and serve more than 1,660 million pages per month, with data from OJD for January 2014. And the MilAnuncios.com portal , which is currently carrying out a large advertising campaign, especially on TV. , has more than 76 million visits and has about 1,100 million page views per month. They are very high figures in both cases and close enough to see that the sum of both will give rise to the true new monarch of classified ads in Spain on the Internet. Which is like saying to the king of classified ads in this country, because this is a sector that is now fundamentally online .
The sale has brought Ricardo García, founder of MilAnuncios.com and main partner, a good part of the 50 million euros in which the operation is encrypted, as well as 10% of the share capital of the Spanish subsidiary of Schibsted Classified Media . The announcement of the purchase makes it explicit that the two trademarks, SegundaMano and MilAnuncios, will be maintained, which will be managed jointly but that they will continue with their current business models, based on users being able to post free ads.
The CEO of the Norwegian company put it this way: “Schibsted aims to be an active part in the consolidation of online classifieds. Today we are delighted to announce that we have acquired the Spanish classifieds site Milanuncios.com, which in recent years has gained popularity in Spain. This reinforces our position as a prominent leader in the Spanish market for online classifieds and will allow us to offer a wide range of services to our Spanish users and advertisers.
The head of SCM in Spain, Frode Nordseth, added that “incorporating MilAnuncios.com into our ecosystem of innovative portals will allow us to continue with the growth strategy and develop this category in the Spanish market. Being able to learn from each other and share best practices, together with our international experience accumulated in the last 20 years of digital transformation, will allow us to continue creating value and improving our service to users and clients ”.