All residential property sellers would like to be assured that their real estate agent and company will prominently feature their home in their print and electronic ads. Real estate advertising is primarily focussed on large display ads in the weekly real estate sections or inserts of the local newspapers; daily classified listings; real estate and specialty magazines; and, of course, online listings. Some real estate agents use other forms of advertising as well, such as radio and television broadcast spots and billboards, but these forms of advertising tend to generically promote the real estate agent and their agency, not any one specific property.
It is to the advantage of the real estate agency to advertise your property since it creates interest and awareness among potential buyers. These buyers then call, email, or visit the agency where they become clients. Over time this creates a home buyers' pool that is seeking a wide variety of properties, each represented by a particular agent. These agents are aware of your property since they keep up with the new listings on the MLS board, or perhaps because they have seen a flyer circulated around the agency, or have been part of an office and broker preview event.
It is interesting to note that an advertisement for a particular home is not necessarily directly responsible for selling that specific property. In many cases, a buyer who is motivated to contact a real estate agency initially asks for information on a listing which is not the actual property that they will end up buying. The advertising exists to create the interest among the buying market for a home, any home, and then it is the responsibility of the agents to guide the client into finding the right home for their preferences and requirements, which may be yours. Think of it as a giant buckshot: although you can never really tell exactly where each single piece of shot is going to hit on the target, you know that they will all hit somewhere.
Although it is gratifying to open up the local newspaper and see your home prominently featured in an advertisement, the specific prominence of your particular property is nowhere near as important as the overall advertisement itself. The real estate agencies which take out full pages in colour are generally going to sell more homes than the ones who have a small black and white ad. Therefore, when you are seeking a real estate agency to represent your home for sale, you should review the advertising habits of your local agencies and weigh that factor to a considerable degree.
The real estate agencies are aware that potential sellers are reviewing their ads in the local media, and that's why they often engage in merciless attempts at topping their competition. They know that you are judging their agency by their ad, thus the bigger, flashier ads are just as focussed towards getting the buyer's attention in order to contact the agency, as they are in getting your attention in wanting to sell your property through them: since they're (judging by their ads) the biggest and the best.
It is also an acknowledged fact of the real estate industry that more houses are sold through behind the scenes networking between agents than all the ads put together. However, this is a virtually invisible facet of the business, as there is no real, quantifiable way for a real estate agent to show a client how hard they are working in this manner. That's why advertising is such a major part of the entire real estate complex: It's a big, flashy, splashy facade which is actually secondary to private conversations and mutual relationships in the process of selling your home.