I've been in online marketing for about 4 years, and I don't see why Listing Router is being hailed as such an amazing innovation. I put together some brief pros and cons. We all love Active Rain, but that's no reason to spend money with them if it could be spent elsewhere more effectively.

Listing Router and traditional SEM buys serve the same basic purpose. You are paying on a Cost Per Click basis to drive people back to your site who have shown an interest in your product or service. The way I see it, there are two important factors to this equation. First, the cost per click. Second, the quality of the traffic.

Cost per Click through Listing Router is a set amount. In my market, Baltimore, you pay $1.99 per click not counting any points discount you may have earned. This stacks up pretty well with Google and Yahoo. For terms like "Baltimore Real Estate" you are looking at at least $1.80 on Yahoo and likely more on Google.

However, you have more flexibility with traditional SEM buys. If you have a smaller budget, you can usually set a lower CPC and still drive a small amount of traffic back to your site. On the other hand, if you want to dominate the competition, you can set a higher CPC and be at the top of the featured advertisers list every time.

So actual CPC being a draw, it comes down to the quality of the traffic you are buying. With Google/Yahoo buys, you can target the keywords that convert best for you. If you focus on one particular neighborhood, you may want to avoid bidding on "Baltimore Real Estate" and just put your money towards "Mount Vernon Real Estate". Listing Router does not have this option and probably does not have the traffic to get this specific.

My biggest gripe with Listing Router is that it takes the choice away from the consumer. At least with SEM buys, you know that each visitor you get chose your site over several of your competitors.

With Listing Router, the consumer puts in an area and gets automatically directed to a broker's or agent's site. They may think they're going to stay on AR and see some listings, then all the sudden they are on some agent's site that they have never heard of. I imagine bounce rates are higher than you would see on Google or Yahoo.

So even though the CPC's might be in the same range, traditional SEM has more flexibility with bidding, allows you to buy more focused key words, and drives more qualified traffic to your site.

I have not tested Listing Router, but these are my first impressions. If you are interested in CPC, just track everything closely and remember that CPC is an important metric but it all really comes down to ROI.