As the battle between Zillow, Compass and MRED plays out in court, both sides have launched an all-out marketing blitz aimed at convincing agents, brokers and consumers who is to blame for the disappearance of Chicagoland listings from Zillow.

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The fight since MRED pulled the plug on Zillow’s listing feed early Wednesday morning has spilled over into paid Instagram ads, LinkedIn comment threads and brokerage marketing channels. And now, Compass says it’s preparing to take its message to physical billboards in Chicago.

In a post unveiling the effort, Compass CEO Robert Reffkin revealed a handful of billboard renderings with the message “Zillow doesn’t have all the listings” and asked agents where the company should place them. A Compass spokesperson confirmed to Inman that the company is preparing to run billboards in Chicago, though they did not provide specifics on placement.

In the comments, Compass allies suggested locations ranging from Chicago expressways and major sports arenas to the National Association of Realtors’ front door on Michigan Avenue.

Meanwhile, Zillow has been running paid ads on Instagram, telling agents that “MRED cut our access to your listings” while promoting its “BeOnZillow” direct-feed program for brokers who want to send listings directly to Zillow. Compass has launched its own paid-ad blitz arguing that “Zillow can’t show you what it doesn’t have,” while promoting its website.

Compass-controlled brands @properties | Christie’s International Real Estate, Coldwell Banker Realty and Jameson Sotheby’s International Realty have joined the messaging push, with each posting variations of the message that consumers may not find all available Chicago-area homes on Zillow.

The dispute has also made its way onto LinkedIn, where Zillow and Compass executives and corporate communications staff have been responding directly to posts and pushing the issue to an audience outside of the real estate industry.

Errol Samuelson, Zillow’s chief industry development officer, has responded directly to posts, arguing that Zillow had “not suppressed a single listing in Chicagoland,” and adding that the whole debacle was over Zillow’s decision not to show nine Compass listings in Florida, Georgia and California.

Reffkin, meanwhile, has argued that Zillow’s feed was pulled because the portal filtered listings by agent or brokerage name, pointing to NAR’s non-filtering policy, while also sharing screenshots of national mainstream media coverage and arguing that “the consumer everywhere will know they can’t find all the home listings on Zillow anymore.”

Redfin has also confirmed to Inman that it plans to launch a targeted marketing blitz in Chicago as well, highlighting that consumers can search and find all available listings on its platform. Rocket-owned Redfin began a listing partnership with Compass earlier this year.

“This fully integrated marketing campaign invites buyers to compare Redfin against any other site,” Rocket CMO Jonathan Mildenhall said over email. “With complete MLS inventory, plus the exclusive launch of ‘Redfin Early Access’ listings that buyers cannot find on any other major site, we are confident that Redfin will become the preferred site for homebuyers in Chicago.”

Zillow sought emergency relief in court Friday morning, asking a judge to intervene after MRED shut off the portal’s access to Chicagoland listings. The court fight could still change the facts on the ground quickly, particularly if Zillow wins emergency relief requiring MRED to restore its feed.

But regardless of the outcome in court, the advertising blitz has heightened the stakes and pushed what might otherwise have been an industry dispute into the court of public opinion and consumer trust.

Update: After publishing this story, a Zillow spokesperson confirmed to Inman that a federal judge ordered MRED to restore Zillow’s access to listings that originate in the MLS.

Reporter Taylor Anderson contributed to this report.

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In a major — albeit temporary — legal victory for Zillow, a federal judge on Friday ordered Chicago’s multiple listing service to restore the portal’s access to listings that originate in the MLS, a Zillow spokesperson told Inman.

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MRED MLS moved earlier this week to cut Zillow’s access to its data feed of real estate listings. Those listings power Zillow and are viewed by hundreds of millions of consumers every month. The judge granted a temporary restraining order stopping MRED from cutting its feed to Zillow, the spokesperson said, and the fully supply of listings was restored within hours of the verbal order.

Shortly after MRED cut Zillow’s feed, over 60 percent of all active listings in Chicago disappeared from the platform. Across MRED’s primary coverage area, which includes all of Illinois and portions of Iowa, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri and Wisconsin, Zillow said in court documents that it lost over half of all listings.

“Today’s ruling is an important first step for the Chicago home buyers, sellers and agents who have been harmed by a coordinated scheme between MRED and Compass to reduce transparency in the housing market,” a Zillow spokesperson said in a statement. “In the middle of a housing affordability crisis, powerful industry players colluded to hide listings, suppress competition and steer consumers toward a single dominant brokerage.”

“The court immediately recognized what was at stake, not just for Zillow, but for every person trying to find or sell a home across Illinois and beyond,” the statement continued. “We will continue to fight to ensure this anti-consumer conduct is not allowed to take root permanently.”

MRED’s decision to cut Zillow’s feed led to a marketing blitz by Compass International Holdings, Redfin and others seeking to capitalize on the temporary drop in active listings on Zillow.

Other real estate platforms maintained their access to the full suite of listings from MRED, giving them thousands more listings than Zillow while its feed was cut.

The ruling comes in the case Zillow filed against MRED and Compass as the three companies battle over Zillow’s attempt to ban listings if they violated the portal’s Listing Access Standard. The standards ban listings from the portal if they were publicly marketed before reaching the MLS and Zillow.

Zillow enacted and began enforcing that policy last year in response to a growing wave of brokerages creating private listing networks — an effort that was driven in large part by Compass.

The judge’s Friday ruling, which has yet to be written and filed on the court docket, doesn’t resolve Zillow’s larger allegation that Compass colluded with MRED to boycott the portal over its pre-marketed listings rules.

In their own statements, Compass and MRED said Friday’s ruling was a mixed bag for Zillow.

“The central issue remains unchanged: Zillow wants the benefit of receiving MLS listing data while reserving the right to discriminate against certain lawful listings, sellers, and brokers whose marketing strategies it disfavors,” MRED said in a statement. “The court’s ruling makes clear that Zillow cannot ignore their license obligations and MRED’s reasonable rules that benefit all participants in our cooperative marketplace and undermine the value of the MLS.”

Zillow hasn’t enforced its pre-marketed listings policy in Chicago and will continue to not enforce the policy in that market in the wake of the Friday ruling, the company said.

MRED cut Zillow’s feed after the portal enforced its rules and refused to display a total of nine listings from Compass agents in Florida, Georgia and California. Those listings started as private listings before eventually being distributed widely via the MLS.

Compass CEO Robert Reffkin told Inman in a text message that Zillow must actively show those nine listings on the platform.

“Why is Zillow fighting so hard to ban listings? Because they want to control how sellers and their agents market homes,” Reffkin wrote. “We have a problem with that and so does the court with the judge ordering that all the 9 banned compass listings be entered back on Zillow and ordering Zillow to not ban listings from MRED going forward!”

Update: This story was updated after publication with additional statements and context. 

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Zillow would either have to ditch what it says are pro-consumer rules nationwide or risk losing its source of listings in Chicagoland unless a federal judge agrees to intervene, the company said in a new filing in its lawsuit against Compass and the MLS serving Chicago.

Zillow asked for a preliminary injunction in a new filing in U.S. District Court in Northern Illinois on Monday, saying that it was likely to win its lawsuit filed last week against MRED and Compass, that it would be harmed if the judge didn’t intervene, and that consumers would also be harmed.

“Absent an injunction, Zillow will be forced to jettison its pro-transparency practices and aid competitors against its will, or else lose the essential listings necessary to compete, all of which would degrade Zillow’s services and irreparably harm Zillow’s platform, business, goodwill, and reputation,” the company said in the new filing.

At stake in the lawsuit is whether Zillow can maintain its Listing Access Standards, a set of rules created and enforced starting last year that sought to stop the spread of private listing networks.

Compass has sought to work around those rules in an effort to provide what it says are more options for sellers looking to market their homes without restrictive rules from the MLSs or portals like Zillow.

The debate has engulfed the industry, as MLSs have rushed to update their rules around coming-soon listings. Four major MLSs — including MRED — have struck agreements to expand nationwide, change their rules and receive a direct listing feed from the brands that make up Compass International Holdings.

Zillow said that its recently launched Zillow Preview option to display some pre-marketed listings is a competitor to private listing networks created by both Compass and MRED.

The company directly named MRED CEO Rebecca Jensen and Compass CEO Robert Reffkin as conspirators in the alleged illegal conduct.

“To insulate Defendants from that competitive threat, MRED’s CEO Rebecca Jensen and Compass’s CEO Robert Reffkin have worked in lockstep — both in secret and in public — to leverage MRED’s monopoly power and control over Chicagoland listing feeds to force competitors like Zillow to display unwanted private listings, abandon pro-consumer listings policies, and to block nascent competing offerings that preference access over exclusivity,” Zillow wrote in the new filing.

Now that MRED has members nationwide, the MLS is threatening to cut off Zillow’s direct feed of listings if the portal continues to block pre-marketed listings that violate its Listing Access Standards.

The company still looks to strike backup listing agreements directly with brokerages in the event that its MLS feed gets disrupted or shut off. Compass told Zillow on May 8 that it had terminated its direct listing feed to Zillow for all of its brands. (Zillow wrote in its new filing that Compass has over a third of the Chicago market share.)

In its initial complaint, Zillow said that MRED had demanded a response by May 19, suggesting that Zillow is on the verge of losing its MLS data feed in the nation’s third-largest real estate market unless the judge rules in its favor and issues a preliminary injunction.

Without a favorable ruling from the judge, Zillow said, it faces “an impossible decision” between abandoning its Listing Access Standards and allowing listings that started in private listing networks to “free-ride on Zillow’s platform,” or to lose its access to MRED listings.

“Either choice causes imminent and irreparable harm to Zillow,” the company wrote.

Losing its source of listings in Chicago, Zillow wrote, “would reduce viewership and impair products that depend on broad sharing of listings, eroding consumer trust in Zillow’s platform and causing an immense but indeterminate amount of lost business.”

Abandoning its standards would also be detrimental, the company argued.

“If deprived of that strategy to maintain the quality and quantity of its listings while this case proceeds, Zillow would face a negative spiral in which the loss of listings leads to lower traffic, making its platform less liquid and attractive overall, thus affecting its entire business in ways that are impossible to quantify,” it wrote.

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