In an effort to find new revenue opportunities in a difficult housing market, real estate site Zillow.com on Friday said it will seek the counsel of the brick-and-mortar sector of the industry by forming an advisory board made up of handpicked executives.

Two-year-old Zillow, an ad-driven real estate data site, is facing a prolonged slump in the U.S. housing market for the first as well as increasing competition from well-funded online rivals such as San Francisco based Trulia.

In response, the company is turning to its 10-member board, which comes from a cross section of regional, national, independent and franchise real estate firms to help create new products and services that will attract users and advertisers to its business.

"Having a core group of thought leaders to help us think through what we are planning on doing in the industry, and keeping us closely tied to industry trends is a smart move on our part," said Jorrit Van der Meulen, vice president of partner relations.

Seattle-based Zillow would not specify what kinds of products it is contemplating, but in recent months it has made an effort to build closer business to brokers and agents, and to broaden its menu of services to include a mortgage marketplace. (see Zillow Hosts Mortgage Open House)

"We have a long list of things that we are working on and we will present those ideas to our advisory board," Mr. Van der Meulen said. "We are hoping that these products will morph a little bit, based on input from our board."

Rival Trulia, which operates a real estate search engine and networking site, launched an industry advisory board in December 2006. Its backers include Accel Partners, Sequoia Capital and Fayez Sarofim.

"We have been meeting regularly with our board, testing new product ideas because we have encouraged both consumer and industry participation from the outset," said Pete Smith, CEO of Trulia.

Zillow, which has raised $87 million in funding so far from such investors as Benchmark Capital, Technology Crossover Ventures, and Boston-based Par Capital Management, said it had 5.1 million visitors to its site in June which represented a 30 percent increase from a year ago. The site has data on 80 million U.S. homes and 70 million Zestimates, Zillow's proprietary calculation of the estimated market value of the homes.

Trulia has taken $33 million in funding and said it attracts about 5 million visitors per month, a number the company says is three times the traffic it had a year ago.