Adwerx: The Definitive Guide to Automated Real Estate Advertising and Mortgage Advertising
In the hyper-competitive worlds of real estate and mortgage lending, standing out is not just an advantage; it’s a necessity. Professionals need advertising solutions that are not only effective but also brilliantly simple and automated. This is where Adwerx enters the picture. This comprehensive guide explores every facet of the Adwerx platform, a powerhouse in digital real estate advertising and mortgage advertising. From its core product offerings to its foundational technology, you’ll discover how Adwerx empowers agents, brokers, and loan officers to build their brands, win more business, and stay top-of-mind with their most valuable audiences. Whether you’re a seasoned professional looking to scale your marketing or a newcomer aiming to make an immediate impact, understanding the Adwerx ecosystem is a critical step toward digital marketing mastery. The platform’s focus on automation and precision targeting makes sophisticated real estate advertising and mortgage advertising accessible to everyone, fundamentally changing the marketing landscape for these vital industries.
Basic Company Overview
What is Adwerx?
Adwerx is a digital advertising automation platform designed to provide brilliantly simple and effective marketing solutions, primarily for the real estate and mortgage industries. The company’s mission is to level the playing field, allowing individual producers and small firms to leverage the same powerful advertising technology as large corporations. At its core, Adwerx automates the creation and placement of digital ads across a vast landscape, including premium websites, social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, and even streaming TV services. This automation is key; it saves professionals countless hours, eliminating the steep learning curve often associated with digital advertising. Instead of needing to become experts in ad tech, users can focus on what they do best—serving their clients. The platform excels at creating targeted campaigns that reach potential clients at every stage of their journey, from initial brand awareness to specific property promotion and nurturing past clients. This makes Adwerx an indispensable tool for anyone serious about building a sustainable and scalable business through strategic real estate advertising or mortgage advertising.
Who is it For?
While Adwerx has its roots deeply planted in the real estate sector, its services are tailored for a specific range of professionals and organizations who rely on local brand recognition and lead generation.
Real Estate Agents and Teams: This is the primary audience for Adwerx. Individual agents and small teams use the platform for a full suite of real estate advertising needs, including promoting new listings, building personal brand awareness in specific ZIP codes, and retargeting website visitors to stay top-of-mind.
Real Estate Brokerages: Entire brokerages leverage Adwerx through its Enterprise solution. This allows them to provide powerful, automated advertising tools to their entire roster of agents, ensuring brand consistency and boosting agent productivity. The service automates real estate advertising for every new listing the moment it hits the market.
Mortgage Loan Officers: The financial counterpart to real estate agents, loan officers use Adwerx for targeted mortgage advertising. They can run campaigns to build their brand among potential homebuyers and, crucially, co-brand with their real estate agent partners to strengthen relationships and generate referrals. This specialized focus on mortgage advertising helps them connect with clients at the exact moment they are considering financing.
Other Localized Businesses: While its main focus is real estate and mortgage, the Adwerx model is effective for other localized, high-value service industries such as insurance, financial advising, and law, where building a trusted local brand is paramount to success. The principles of automated, targeted real estate advertising and mortgage advertising translate well to these adjacent fields.
Company History
Adwerx was founded in 2013 by Jed Carlson, a veteran of the real estate technology space. The genesis of the company came from a simple but powerful observation: real estate agents were experts in relationships and transactions, not in the complex, ever-changing world of digital advertising. There was a clear need for a tool that could deliver enterprise-level advertising power with consumer-level simplicity. The initial product focused on a concept that was revolutionary for its time in the industry: making digital display advertising (the banner ads you see on major websites) easy and accessible for the individual agent.
The company was built on the principle of automation. Carlson and the founding team envisioned a system where an agent could launch a sophisticated real estate advertising campaign in just a few clicks. This campaign would then run automatically, targeting local consumers and following up with website visitors through retargeting. This “set it and forget it” approach was a game-changer.
Headquartered in Durham, North Carolina, Adwerx quickly gained traction. Its growth was fueled by its focus on a specific niche and its commitment to solving a real problem for its customers. The company became a prominent player in the Research Triangle’s thriving tech scene. Over the years, Adwerx expanded its product line beyond simple display ads, incorporating social media, streaming TV, and other channels to create a comprehensive digital marketing platform. Its success in real estate advertising paved the way for its expansion into the closely related field of mortgage advertising, where the same principles of brand building and targeted outreach apply. Today, Adwerx serves hundreds of thousands of professionals and partners with some of the largest real estate and mortgage brands in the world, staying true to its original mission of making digital advertising brilliantly simple.
Adwerx Funding History
Adwerx has successfully raised a total of $27.7 million over six funding rounds. This strategic fundraising has enabled the company to scale its platform, expand into new verticals, and solidify its position as a leader in the real estate and mortgage advertising technology sectors.
Key Funding Rounds:
Initial Funding (August 2015): Adwerx’s first significant funding round occurred on August 3, 2015.
Series A (August 2017): The company raised $4.3 million in a Series A round led by Grotech Ventures, with participation from Bull City Venture Partners and Alerion Ventures. This capital was instrumental in scaling the Adwerx Enterprise program within the real estate market.
Venture Round (November 2021): Adwerx secured $14.5 million in a round that included both equity and debt financing. Key investors in this round were Texas Capital Bank and Savano Capital Partners.
Series B (January & May 2023): The company raised a total of $5.8 million in its Series B funding across two separate closings. The most recent infusion of $3 million in May 2023 was led by Savano Capital Partners and Observatory Capital Management. This round also saw continued participation from existing investors such as Grotech Ventures, Bull City Venture Partners, and Alerion Ventures, as well as a strategic investment from Second Century Ventures, the venture arm of the National Association of REALTORS®.
Prominent Investors:
Throughout its history, Adwerx has attracted a strong syndicate of investors with expertise in both technology and real estate. Some of their key financial backers include:
Grotech Ventures: A leading early investor in high-potential technology companies.
Bull City Venture Partners: A venture capital firm focused on investing in software, and internet companies.
Savano Capital Partners: A venture capital firm that invests in growth-stage software and technology-enabled services companies.
Alerion Ventures: An early-stage venture capital firm.
Second Century Ventures: The strategic venture arm of the National Association of REALTORS®, highlighting the real estate industry’s confidence in Adwerx’s platform.
Texas Capital Bank: Provided debt financing to support the company’s growth.
Triangle Tweener Fund: A fund focused on early-stage companies in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina.
Adwerx Solutions
Adwerx organizes its offerings into two primary, industry-specific solutions, ensuring that the tools and strategies are perfectly aligned with the unique needs of each profession. Both solutions are built on the same powerful automation engine but are tailored with features and integrations relevant to their respective fields. This focused approach distinguishes Adwerx in the competitive marketing technology landscape, making it a leader in both real estate advertising and mortgage advertising.
Real Estate Advertising Solutions
The real estate advertising solution from Adwerx is a comprehensive suite designed to support agents and brokerages at every stage of the business cycle. It’s about more than just generating a single lead; it’s about building a long-term, sustainable business through consistent and automated brand promotion. The platform empowers real estate professionals to be seen everywhere that matters online.
Key aspects of the Adwerx real estate advertising solution include:
Automated Listing Ads: At the brokerage level, Adwerx can automatically create and launch an ad campaign for every new property the moment it’s listed. This provides immediate value to the selling client and frees the agent from having to manually create marketing materials.
Brand Building: Agents can run campaigns targeted to specific ZIP codes, ensuring their face and brand are consistently displayed to potential clients in their farm areas. This builds the name recognition necessary to be the first person homeowners think of when they decide to sell.
Sphere of Influence (SOI) Marketing: Agents can upload their contact database and serve personalized ads directly to their past clients and professional network. This is a powerful tool for nurturing relationships and generating repeat and referral business, a cornerstone of successful real estate advertising.
Recruiting for Brokerages: Brokerages use the Adwerx platform not just for property ads, but also to run targeted campaigns aimed at recruiting top-producing agents from competitors.
Mortgage Advertising Solutions
The mortgage advertising solution is tailored to the unique challenges and opportunities faced by loan officers and lending institutions. In the mortgage world, success is built on trust and relationships, especially with real estate agents who are the primary source of referrals. The Adwerx platform is engineered to foster these critical connections.
Key aspects of the Adwerx mortgage advertising solution include:
Co-Branded Advertising: This is a cornerstone of the mortgage advertising solution. Loan officers can easily create digital ads that feature both their own branding and the branding of their preferred real estate agent partners. These ads often promote a specific listing, providing value to the agent while showcasing the lending partnership to potential buyers.
Targeting First-Time Homebuyers: Loan officers can run awareness campaigns that target individuals whose online behaviors indicate they may be in the market for a home loan. This proactive approach to mortgage advertising helps fill the pipeline with new prospects.
Building a Referral Network: By consistently running co-branded ads, loan officers stay top-of-mind with their agent partners. This digital “thank you” reinforces the relationship and encourages future referrals, making it a highly effective form of mortgage advertising.
Enterprise Solutions for Lenders: Large lending institutions use Adwerx to provide their entire team of loan officers with a compliant and easy-to-use advertising platform. This ensures brand consistency and empowers individual loan officers to market themselves effectively in their local communities.
Adwerx Key Product Lines
The power of the Adwerx platform lies in its diverse yet integrated suite of advertising products. Each product is designed to address a specific marketing objective, from promoting a new listing to building a long-term brand presence. Together, they form a holistic ecosystem for digital real estate advertising and mortgage advertising.
Ads for Real Estate Listings
This is one of the foundational products offered by Adwerx. When a real estate agent takes on a new listing, getting the word out quickly and broadly is paramount. This product automates that process with stunning efficiency.
Features: The platform automatically pulls listing photos, details (like price and number of bedrooms), and the agent’s branding directly from the MLS or the brokerage’s data feed. It then generates a portfolio of professional-looking ad creatives optimized for different platforms. The ads are targeted to potential buyers in a radius around the property’s location. A key feature is the reporting dashboard, which shows sellers exactly how much visibility their property is getting online, providing a tangible demonstration of the agent’s marketing efforts.
Benefits: The primary benefit is speed and automation. An ad campaign can be live within hours of the listing going on the market, without the agent needing to do any design work. This impresses sellers and attracts buyers. It also serves as a powerful piece of an agent’s listing presentation, showing prospective clients the sophisticated real estate advertising they will receive.
Ads for Your Sphere & Database
Often called “Sphere of Influence” (SOI) advertising, this product turns an agent’s or loan officer’s contact list into a powerful marketing asset.
Features: Users can securely upload their database of past clients, prospects, and professional contacts. Adwerx then matches these contacts to their online profiles on social media and across the web. The platform serves customized ads directly to this curated audience. The ads are designed to be subtle reminders, keeping the professional’s brand top-of-mind.
Benefits: This is one of the most cost-effective forms of real estate advertising and mortgage advertising. It focuses on nurturing the relationships that are most likely to lead to repeat and referral business. It automates the process of “staying in touch,” ensuring that when someone in their sphere needs real estate or mortgage services, they are the first person who comes to mind.
Brand Ads by Zip Code
This product is all about establishing and maintaining a dominant brand presence in a specific geographic area, often referred to as a “farm area” in real estate.
Features: Professionals select the specific ZIP codes where they want to build their brand. Adwerx then serves their branded ads to people who live in or have shown interest in those areas. The ads are displayed on premium websites, news portals, and social media feeds that this audience frequents. The campaigns are designed for long-term consistency.
Benefits: Consistency is key in branding. This product ensures that a professional’s face and message are seen over and over again by the right people in the right places. This builds familiarity and trust, so when a homeowner in that ZIP code decides to sell, that agent is already a recognized name. It is a proactive, long-term strategy for real estate advertising.
Digital Out-of-Home Ads
A modern take on a classic advertising medium, this Adwerx product brings brand messages to physical locations through digital screens.
Features: This service allows advertisers to place their ads on digital billboards, screens in gyms, bars, office buildings, and other high-traffic public spaces. The targeting is still geographically precise, allowing a real estate agent to, for example, run ads on screens in a specific neighborhood. The platform provides a simple interface for what is traditionally a complex media buy.
Benefits: This product offers a unique way to capture attention and build brand prestige. Seeing an ad on a large digital screen in a public place can have a significant psychological impact, positioning the advertiser as a major player in the local market. It’s a powerful supplement to online real estate advertising and mortgage advertising campaigns.
Streaming TV Ads
This product puts Adwerx clients on the most popular screen in the house: the television. It taps into the rapidly growing market of Connected TV (CTV) and Over-the-Top (OTT) streaming services.
Features: Users can run their own 15- or 30-second video commercials on major streaming platforms like Hulu, Sling TV, and networks like ESPN and HGTV. Adwerx makes this incredibly accessible; users can even use a simple tool to create their own video ad right on the platform. The ads are targeted based on geography and viewer demographics, ensuring they reach the right local audience.
Benefits: TV advertising was once reserved for only the largest brands with massive budgets. Adwerx democratizes it. A local real estate agent or loan officer can now have a professional commercial airing on the same platforms as national giants. This builds immense credibility and brand authority. It is a cutting-edge tactic for both real estate advertising and mortgage advertising.
Video Ads
Beyond television, Adwerx enables video advertising across the web and social media, capitalizing on the high engagement rates of video content.
Features: This product allows for the distribution of video ads on platforms like Facebook and Instagram, as well as on websites that support video ad formats. The targeting is precise, focusing on specific demographics and geographic locations. The platform supports various video lengths and formats, providing flexibility for different marketing messages.
Benefits: Video is the most engaging form of content online. Video ads capture attention far more effectively than static images. They are perfect for property tours, client testimonials, or market updates. This product provides an easy way to leverage the power of video in any real estate advertising or mortgage advertising strategy.
Retargeting Ads
Retargeting is one of the most powerful tools in digital marketing, and it’s a core component of the Adwerx platform.
Features: Adwerx provides a small snippet of code (a “pixel”) to be placed on the user’s website. When someone visits the site, the pixel anonymously tags them. As that person then browses other websites and social media, Adwerx serves them the professional’s ads, reminding them of their brand and encouraging them to return.
Benefits: Retargeting focuses your advertising budget on a warm audience—people who have already shown interest in your services by visiting your website. It is incredibly efficient. For real estate advertising, it keeps an agent’s brand in front of potential clients who are actively researching the market. For mortgage advertising, it ensures a loan officer stays top-of-mind as a borrower compares options. It’s a fundamental tactic for converting interest into action.
Technology & Tools
The “brilliantly simple” user experience of Adwerx is powered by some very sophisticated underlying technology. The company has invested heavily in creating a platform that automates complex processes, making them accessible to non-technical users. The technology is the engine that drives effective real estate advertising and mortgage advertising campaigns.
At its core, Adwerx is a demand-side platform (DSP) that is pre-configured and optimized for the real estate and mortgage industries. This means it has direct connections to all the major ad exchanges, social media platforms, and streaming TV networks. When a user launches a campaign, the Adwerx platform automatically handles the real-time bidding, targeting, and ad placement across thousands of potential sites and apps.
Key technological components include:
Automation Engine: This is the heart of Adwerx. It automates everything from ad creation (pulling data from MLS feeds) to campaign optimization. The engine’s algorithms are constantly working to find the most effective placements for ads to maximize visibility and impact.
Proprietary Targeting Algorithms: While leveraging the targeting capabilities of platforms like Facebook and Google, Adwerx has also developed its own proprietary algorithms. These are specifically tuned to identify the online behaviors of likely homebuyers, sellers, and borrowers, leading to more efficient real estate advertising and mortgage advertising.
Reporting and Analytics Dashboard: The platform provides users with a clean, easy-to-understand dashboard that shows key metrics like ad views (impressions), clicks, and campaign reach. For listing ads, it even provides a branded report that agents can share directly with their sellers.
Ad Creative Builder: For services like Streaming TV ads, Adwerx offers a simple, template-based tool that allows users to build their own professional-looking video commercials in minutes, using their own photos, logos, and contact information. This removes a major barrier to entry for video advertising.
Adwerx Partnership
Partnerships are a cornerstone of the Adwerx business model. By integrating with leading companies in the real estate and mortgage ecosystems, Adwerx is able to deliver seamless, automated advertising experiences to a massive user base. These collaborations are crucial for scaling its real estate advertising and mortgage advertising solutions.
Some of their most notable partnerships include:
Leading Real Estate Brokerages: Adwerx has established enterprise-level partnerships with a significant portion of the top real estate firms in the United States. These include brands like RE/MAX, Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices, Howard Hanna Real Estate Services, and Compass. Through these partnerships, advertising for new listings is often fully automated for every agent in the company.
Real Estate Technology Companies: They integrate with various real estate CRMs, website providers, and other technology platforms. A key partnership is with the National Association of REALTORS® through its REALTOR Benefits® Program, which provides special pricing and packages to NAR members.
Leading Mortgage Lenders: In the mortgage space, Adwerx partners with top national lenders like Guaranteed Rate and Movement Mortgage. These partnerships provide loan officers with a turn-key, compliant solution for their mortgage advertising needs, including powerful co-branding tools to use with their agent partners.
Technology Integrations: The platform integrates with data sources like the MLS (Multiple Listing Service) across the country, which is what enables the automation of listing ad campaigns. These data partnerships are fundamental to the efficiency of their real estate advertising product.
These partnerships create a powerful network effect, embedding Adwerx deeply into the daily workflow of hundreds of thousands of real estate and mortgage professionals.
Adwerx Awards and Recognitions
Adwerx‘s innovation and rapid growth have been recognized by numerous prestigious awards in both the technology and real estate sectors. These accolades validate the company’s impact on the industry and its commitment to excellence.
Inc. 5000: Adwerx has been named to the Inc. 5000 list of America’s fastest-growing private companies multiple times. This is a testament to its sustained growth and market adoption.
Swanepoel Power 200 (SP 200): The company has been included in this influential ranking of the most powerful and influential residential real estate brokerage companies.
HousingWire Tech100: This award recognizes the most innovative technology companies in the housing economy. Adwerx has been a frequent honoree for its contributions to real estate advertising and mortgage advertising technology.
Inman Innovator Awards: Adwerx has been a finalist and winner of this coveted award, which celebrates innovation and forward-thinking in the real estate industry.
Local and Regional Awards: As a prominent company in the Research Triangle Park area of North Carolina, Adwerx has also received numerous local awards for being a top workplace and a leading technology company.
These awards highlight the company’s status as a leader and innovator, consistently pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in digital marketing for its core industries.
Why Choose Adwerx?
In a market flooded with complex marketing tools and abstract promises, Adwerx stands out for its unwavering commitment to simplicity, effectiveness, and automation. The reasons to choose Adwerx for your real estate advertising or mortgage advertising needs are clear and compelling.
1. Unmatched Simplicity: The platform is designed for busy professionals, not marketing gurus. You can launch a sophisticated, multi-platform digital advertising campaign in minutes, not hours. The user interface is intuitive, and the process is guided, removing the guesswork and technical barriers that plague other advertising systems.
2. Powerful Automation: The “set it and forget it” nature of Adwerx is its most powerful feature. For brokerages, listing ads launch automatically. For individual agents and loan officers, brand campaigns run continuously in the background, building mindshare while they focus on clients. This automation ensures marketing consistency, which is the key to long-term success.
3. All-in-One Solution: Adwerx provides a comprehensive suite of tools to address every marketing need. From promoting a new property and building a brand in a target neighborhood to nurturing past clients and making a splash on streaming TV, it’s a single, integrated platform that covers the entire marketing funnel. This eliminates the need to patch together multiple, disparate services.
4. Enterprise-Grade Power for Everyone: Adwerx democratizes digital advertising. It gives individual producers and small firms access to the same high-tech advertising—retargeting, behavioral targeting, streaming TV ads—that was once the exclusive domain of large corporations with massive budgets. It levels the playing field, allowing quality service, not budget size, to win the day.
5. Proven Results and Industry Focus: Adwerx is not a generic advertising tool. It was built from the ground up specifically for the real estate and mortgage industries. Its products, targeting, and partnerships are all tailored to the unique dynamics of these markets. With hundreds of thousands of users and partnerships with the biggest names in the industry, its effectiveness is proven at scale. Choosing Adwerx means choosing a platform that understands your business.
Ultimately, opting for Adwerx is a strategic decision to invest in a marketing system that works for you, freeing up your time, amplifying your brand, and delivering a tangible return on your investment. It transforms real estate advertising and mortgage advertising from a complex chore into a simple, automated, and powerful driver of business growth. The platform’s ability to keep professionals top-of-mind with their ideal clients is not just a feature—it’s the fundamental building block of a successful and enduring career in these competitive fields.
FAQs
How does Adwerx target ads for real estate?
Adwerx uses a multi-layered targeting approach for real estate advertising. For listing ads, it targets users within a specific geographic radius of the property (typically 15 miles). For brand ads, it targets by ZIP code. Beyond geography, it uses behavioral targeting, showing ads to people whose online activity (e.g., visiting real estate portals, using mortgage calculators) suggests they are in the market to buy or sell a home. It also uses retargeting to show ads to people who have visited the agent’s website.
Is Adwerx effective for mortgage advertising?
Yes, Adwerx is highly effective for mortgage advertising. Its core strength is in building the loan officer’s personal brand and fostering relationships with real estate agents. The co-branding feature is particularly powerful, as it allows loan officers to provide a tangible marketing benefit to their agent partners, which helps generate referrals. By targeting potential homebuyers in their local market, Adwerx helps loan officers build a pipeline of new business.
How much do Adwerx campaigns cost?
The cost of Adwerx campaigns varies depending on the product, duration, and the size of the target audience or geographic area. For example, a one-week ad campaign for a single listing is typically very affordable. Brand awareness campaigns by ZIP code or streaming TV ads are subscription-based, with pricing dependent on the market’s competitiveness and the desired ad frequency. The platform is designed to be accessible, with entry points for individual producers and scalable pricing for large enterprises.
Can I see where my ads are running?
Adwerx campaigns run across a massive network of websites, social media platforms, and mobile apps. This includes top-tier sites like The New York Times, ESPN, and local news outlets, as well as Facebook and Instagram. While you won’t get a list of every single site, the reporting dashboard shows you the types of sites where your ads appear and provides key metrics on views and clicks, giving you a clear picture of your campaign’s performance.
Is Adwerx a replacement for Zillow or Realtor.com?
No, Adwerx is not a replacement for listing portals like Zillow or Realtor.com; it’s a complement to them. Zillow and Realtor.com are “destination sites” where consumers actively go to search for homes. Adwerx is a “push” advertising platform. It proactively pushes your brand and listings out to consumers as they browse the web and use social media, reaching them before they even go to a search portal. An effective real estate advertising strategy often involves using both types of platforms.
Do I have to sign a long-term contract?
Adwerx offers a high degree of flexibility. Many of its products, like listing ads, can be purchased on a week-by-week basis with no long-term commitment. Other products designed for brand building, such as ZIP code advertising or streaming TV ads, are typically sold as monthly or quarterly subscriptions to ensure the consistency needed for branding to be effective.
Adwerx Leadership & Teams
Profile
Name: Adwerx
Industry: Marketing Technology, Digital Advertising
Founded: 2013
CEO: Dan London
Headquarters: 410 Blackwell Street, Suite 120, Durham, NC 27701, USA
Annual Revenue: Not publicly disclosed
Employees: Estimated 51–200
Specialization: Automated Digital Advertising for the Real Estate and Mortgage Industries
Notable Clients: RE/MAX, Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices, Compass, Howard Hanna Real Estate Services, Guaranteed Rate, Movement Mortgage, National Association of REALTORS
Website: adwerx.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/adwerx/