The company is confident the move will benefit brokers, agents and their clients, saying it boosted online lead generation by more than 237% in 2008 while cost per leads have dropped 62% from a year ago.

In the 1970s, Century 21 was the first real estate franchiser to purchase national TV ads.

Although Century 21 may do a few more national TV ads to publicize April as the company's open-house month, TV ads promoting the franchise brand are likely a thing of the past. While the money once spent on TV will instead go to online marketing.

A Realogy Corp. subsidiary, Century 21 claims that its franchises make up the world's largest residential real estate sales force. When the company dropped print advertising a year or two ago, it found it had some explaining to do to brokers and their clients.

The research and consulting firm Borrell Associates forecasts that by 2013, 33.1% of a projected $35.3 billion in real estate related advertising will be spent online, compared with online's 19.6% market share in 2005. Borrell estimates that online advertising by real estate related companies and mortgage lenders grew by nearly 20% in 2007, to $9.1 billion, but will see slower growth during the current economic downturn.

But that doesn't mean TV is dead yet. Borrell is forecasting that broadcast and cable TV together will still attract an estimated 22.2% of real estate-related ad spending by 2013, up slightly from 19.9% in 2005.

Cable television is expected to reach parity with broadcast TV as cable gains market share and broadcast loses it. Cable and broadcast can each be expected to command about 11% of real estate ad spending in 2013, compared with a 12.2% market share for broadcast TV and 7.7% for cable in 2005, Borrell estimates.