Imagine for a moment that two real estate sites are battling for your business. You're a broker and post listings on both. At the end of the day which site is more interesting?

• In the past month ExtraLargeRealty.com had 30 billion hits, 10 million unique visitors, averaged 18 minutes per user visit, issued 94 news releases, established 28 strategic partnerships, was rated #1 by Suet & Sludge, and recorded a $12 million profit -- excluding interest, taxes, salaries and rent.

• PlainAndLocal.com -- which is run by Fred from the basement of a nearby bakery -- had 4,700 visitors in the past month and produced leads that directly resulted in two sales.

If you're a broker the numbers related to the first site are irrelevant. They don't count, they don't matter, and despite their seemingly-impressive size and heft they are outweighed by the issue which speaks loudest: The second site produced checks.

The current and ongoing dispute regarding who's got the #1 realty site, HomeAdvisor or Realtor.com, is instantly important to company executives, investors, employees, competitors, and a small number of industry leaders.

But whether a site is #1 -- or whether a site is among the top 10,000 -- is a secondary issue to most brokers. Brokers are interested in numbers, but not these numbers. For them, the question that matters is who can provide the most local productivity at the lowest possible cost. Whether productive leads originate online, off-line, a block away, or from interstellar space is immaterial.

"Productive leads" are those within the realm of commercial plausibility. Big numbers nationwide are less important than big numbers locally. It does no good to get 40 leads from prospects who live outside the broker's marketplace, are not moving until 2004, or are only willing to pay $9 an hour for professional services.

The "lowest possible cost" means that brokers, being reasonable, want to pay as little as they can for online marketing services. But brokers also don't want their data used to re-direct prospects to competitors or to build-up potential rivals -- think of it this way: Sears does nothing to boost Wal-Mart, and vice versa.

Al Napier, an agent with RE/MAX Precision Realty in Newington, CT, says in March he held a buyer's seminar attended by 51 people. From those attendees Napier got two listings and five sales -- so far. He also has another dozen buyers under contract, and some of them will also engage Napier to sell their current properties when they contract for replacement homes. Napier's cost for his seminar: Roughly $1,500 for advertising and mailers.

"I personally prefer to find clients off-line," says Napier, a long-time proponent of Internet marketing. "I like the interaction. I'd rather stand in front of a room full of people than answer e-mail all day.

But, he says, "I'll take business wherever I can get it. Some years the Internet has represented as much as 20 percent of my business. But it has to be cost competitive and easy-to-maintain."

Look at the daily newspaper. Have brokers and builders abandoned local advertising in the face of massive Internet growth?

In 1997 it was estimated by William Bass, senior analyst with Forrester Research, that by this year real estate classified ads would be down 40 percent.

Realty notices are a major part of classified ad volume. And what has happened to classified ads in general? According to Jim Conaghan, vice president of market and business analysis for the Newspaper Association of American, classified ad revenues reached an estimated $19.7 billion last year -- up significantly from the $16.7 billion spent in 1997.

In the same way that Broker Smith has a variety of local marketing options (newspapers, open houses, mail, etc.), the same is true online. Smith can be part of national, regional, franchise, company, and personal sites. Maybe all, maybe some.

What are brokers doing?

• I looked at two local home guides and found more than 150 pages of ads. The magazines were free. I didn't have to register to look at the ads and no one recorded my e-mail address or anything else. Virtually every broker and agent promoted one website. Their own.

• I checked the morning paper. Two regional brokers had full page ads. What URLs did they promote? Their own.

• The New York Times Magazine ran an executive home advertorial section over the weekend. It had dozens of pages filled with huge houses and lots of URLs posted by advertising brokers. What websites did the brokers promote? Their own.

What are brokers doing with their ad dollars? They're driving traffic to their own sites and turning site URLs into branded identifiers. They're controlling their costs. They're making sure that nothing comes between them and consumers. They're assuring that no prospects are diverted to other sites or services. They're using whatever software they want. They're placing whatever content they want on their sites. They're not paying referral fees. They're controlling their data.

The looming issue is not whether a site has impressive numbers, but whether it produces additional and attractive business for local brokers. The sites that can generate productive leads -- whether national, regional, local, franchise, company, personal or whatever -- won't suffer from any shortage of broker attention and support.

For more articles by Peter G. Miller, please press here.