MTV Media Changes Tack with Jokakoti.fi

When MTV Media started the real estate portal Jokakoti in Finland in 2009, the idea was to challenge the existing real estate sites - with long experience with its very successful MTV sites, this made a lot of sense for the company. But two years later, it was time to rethink things. "We were not as successful as we'd liked and we knew by 2010 that the biggest real estate brokers wanted to establish their own portal," says Heikki Rotko, Executive Vice President at MTV. "So we decided to sell it to a newly established company called Jokakoti Oy, which will be jointly owned by the four biggest real estate groups, the association for smaller real estate agencies, of which there are about 400, and MTV Oy.

"The 'new' Jokakoti Oy is now aiming to be the market leader," says Rotko. "MTV3 still will keep running a weekly 30-minute Jokakoti infomercial on Sunday mornings and will be the only party doing media sales for the Jokakoti Portal and as well for the infomercial."

The deal was signed yesterday, and should be in full legal and operational force on April 1, when the operation will be transferred from MTV Oy to Jokakoti Oy. A staff of four people will be transferred to Jokakoti at the same time.