While there have been a handful of advocates of such media for several years, it seems clear from this year's conference program and awards nominees at Inman's ConnectSF that the new new thing is video for real estate listings.  Beyond the more traditional video advertising folks and supplanting the virtual tour people turned cinematographers, there are now dozens of startups aimed squarely at "video brochures" for listings.

Personally, I just don't see it.  Specifically, I don't see how video will outmode the current melange of high resolution stills, annotated slide show tours, or pseudo-3D ("true") virtual tours.  Heck, it doesn't even look to me like virtual tours have actually matured and reached their potential for interactivity... yet they're already outmoded?

Here are my discussion points on the topic:

• Video Tours require attention to detail and must be executed well to be effective [Paraphrasing MWurzer there a bit].  It seems to me that having actual production quality is going to take more than the $29.95 that some of these sites are quoting.  Surely they aren't generating tailored marketing for so little.  If they are, the whole medium will be commoditized in no time, dulling its edge and probably increasing the world's bandwidth costs.
  
• Producing a more in-depth view of a house may, in fact, be detrimental to its marketing.  To quote my high school English teacher, "[promotional material] should be like a woman's skirt:  long enough to cover the subject, but short enough to generate interest."  If the viewer feels they've seen all there is to see of the home, why go for a showing?
  
• If a prospective buyer takes the time to sit through an entire 20-minute video presentation, how unlikely were they to schedule a showing in the first place?

Everyone knows (or at least they soon will) that it's still promotional material -- it's showing the absolute best facets of the house in the absolute best conditions possible.    Okay, it may be great for a listing presentation to say that you (as an agent) offer video.  But, unless someone can produce empirical evidence to the contrary, I'm going to stick with the fact that anyone who lasts through a listing video was going to see the property anyway.

From a totally different angle... maybe there just isn't anything else compelling in the marketplace this year, and listing video is hot by default.