Facebook Marketplace Expands Into Home Services

In our latest Industry Spotlight, the team discuss Facebook’s recent announcement that Facebook Marketplace will be expanding into home services, partnering with the likes of Handy, HomeAdvisor and Porch. Click here to subscribe to our YouTube channel…

See below for the full video transcription.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION:

Lee: Okay. So the second topic that we’re gonna cover is Facebook Marketplace expanding into home services. So Facebook Marketplace has been around for quite a long time. It’s sort of a hybrid mix of eBay, Craigslist, sort of auction-car boot style stuff where you basically put anything that you’ve got lying around that you don’t want anymore up for free and people come and collect it.

They’re moving into finding service professionals, so things like plumbers, electricians, and things like that. The initial launch is gonna be U.S. only. They are partnering with three existing home services providers or home services verification services in Handy, HomeAdvisor, and Porch.

So to become a service professional on Facebook Marketplace, you’re gonna have to have a verified profile with any one of those three or all three. So it’s interesting that Facebook is using those three select partners to verify things like ratings, reviews, and credentials. That’s probably quite a big boost for those three. As it stands, this is gonna not be monetized. But knowing Facebook, at some point there will be a paid version of this…

Jamie: Or just ads…

Lee: …in some way.

Jamie: …ads in line with all listings.

Lee: How would they monetize that?

Jamie: They’re already…

Lee: What you mean like have promoted service providers?

Jamie: Yeah.

Lee: Yeah. I think that’s gonna happen at some point.

Jamie: I wonder if there will be a race to get, so when this is launched in the U.K., for example, I wonder if Checkatrade or MyHammer will be queuing up to get on this.

Chris: It’ll tie in with all the targeting features that they’ve got across ads at the minute as well; you’ll be able to target somebody potentially whose looking for plumbing services or has been browsing forums that are looking for a specific job, something like that.

Jamie: I wonder if this will tie in with existing pages that are in that industry.

Lee: Yeah. Basically, they’re launching this feature with no monetisation and they’re not pulling in or sharing data with any of the three sites. So with them partnering with Handy, HomeAdvisor, and Porch, they’re not pulling data into Facebook from those platforms either. They’re just using that as a verification. That’s interesting.