Vendor paid advertising has been the elephant in the room at every agency meeting I’ve consulted at this year. Budgets keep going up. The portals keep adding new tiers. Vendors keep paying. But the conversion data is starting to tell a different story than the sales pitch.

I’m not anti-VPA. The right campaign on the right property still moves the needle. But the default $5,000-$8,000 packages that some agencies push automatically — those need a hard look.

What’s actually changed

Two things have shifted since the last time most agencies updated their VPA template:

First, buyer behaviour has fragmented. Five years ago, buyers used REA Group and Domain as their primary search tools and looked at little else. Now they’re on Instagram, TikTok, niche local Facebook groups, and increasingly on AI-driven property search tools that pull data from multiple sources without requiring a portal visit.

Second, premium placement on the major portals has gotten more crowded and less differentiated. When you pay for “Premiere” or “Platinum” placement, you’re competing with every other listing on the same tier. The boost over a standard listing isn’t what it used to be.

The data agencies don’t want to share

I’ve looked at click-through and enquiry data across about 40 listings over the past quarter, comparing standard placement to premium VPA campaigns. The premium listings get more views. They don’t always get more enquiries. And the ratio of enquiries to actual offers is roughly the same.

What does correlate with offers? Photos quality, listing copy specificity, accurate price guides, and inspection times that suit the buyer pool. None of that requires VPA.

This isn’t an argument for skipping VPA — it’s an argument for being honest about what it does and doesn’t do.

Where VPA still earns its keep

Premium placement absolutely makes sense in specific scenarios:

• Properties priced above the suburb median, where the buyer pool is smaller and harder to reach
• Off-the-beaten-path properties that need extra exposure to find the right buyer
• Strict sale timeframes where you need to compress the campaign window
• Markets where competitor stock is particularly heavy and visibility matters

For mid-range properties in active markets with a clear buyer pool, the marginal benefit over a well-executed standard listing is small.

The conversation with vendors

The agents I respect most have started running a different conversation with vendors. Instead of presenting a default $6,000 package, they walk through three or four options with honest projections of what each delivers.

Most vendors, when given the actual numbers, choose a more modest campaign and put the saved money into staging or photography. Both of those have a more direct impact on offer quality.

A few still want the maximum spend, usually because their neighbour did it or because the agent down the road talked it up. That’s their call. But framing it as a choice rather than a default changes the dynamic.

What the Real Estate Institute data is showing

Industry bodies have started publishing more granular data on VPA effectiveness, partly in response to ongoing consumer questions about value. The trend lines aren’t favourable to expensive default packages. Days on market for premium-VPA properties versus standard-VPA properties in similar price brackets are now within statistical noise of each other.

That doesn’t mean VPA is dead. It means the days of charging $6,000 by default and not having to justify it are ending.

Where this goes

Agencies that get ahead of this conversation — by being upfront about what VPA does and doesn’t do — build trust that pays off in repeat business and referrals. Agencies that keep selling premium packages on autopilot will eventually get caught out, either by a vendor who runs the numbers or by an industry-level change in how VPA is regulated and disclosed.

The ones that thrive will be the ones who’ve already moved past the default-package mindset.