I was recently at the South Florida REALTOR Profitability Conference and the Luncheon speaker asked an interesting question:

"How many of the REALTORS here have run a newspaper ad that no one replied to?"

I was genuinely surprised by the number of hands that went up.

Now lets look at real estate video. I'm not talking the multitude of video sites that have sprung up that will get you dozens of video views...I'm referring to sites like http://vidlisting.com which have an actual strategy that nets hundreds of video views in the first two weeks and in the thousands of views in the first month.

Compared To Newspaper Advertising: About the same price of a newspaper ad that runs for a few days. however, real estate video runs for months and is available 24x7 whereas newspaper advertising is only good for the days that it runs plus a few days after.

Compared To Google Pricing: Right now, our pricing runs about $0.30 per video viewed (or clicked) in the first month and substantially cheaper over the life of the video. I would expect that $0.30 per click is competetive in almost very major metropolitan area in the U.S. and less expensive than many. We expect that price per click to be around $0.05 within 6 months as we continue to implement the video distribution deals with major real estate portals throughout the world. Plus, our company offer the unique benefit of appearing in Google searches in different languages without additional cost.

Compared To Television: Competitive with TV pricing in some markets and significantly less expensive in others. In TV, you pay for eyeballs so the more popular the show, the more you pay. Due to our effective real estate video distribution strategy, our videos likely get far more eyeballs than the average real estate TV show. Our company also offers the unique benefit of including television advertising for only a small additional fee over what you pay for internet publication.

Cost of Branding: We believe that their is a cost to you and your brand when your brand is dwarfed by the branding of the player that you are using. If your brand isnt the prominent one on the video player, whose brand are you really paying to market?

All this said, real estate video *is* expensive if no one sees it and especially if prospective buyers dont see it. But that is also true with any advertising medium....As with any purchase, buyer beware!! Ask to see specific numbers and dont be mislead by video views that have nothing to do with properties. Remember when being shown data by a provider of any type that you are much more likely to be near the average than be the exception.

Tony

See Also:

Progress Report: Performance For The Critical First Fourteen Days Of A Video Listing
Why The Video Tour Industry Just Doesn't Get It....
Tips To Avoid The Real Estate Video Numbers Shell Game
Yes, But Number One In Google For What?!?
Measuring Online Engagement With Real Estate Video
Real Estate Video: Maintaining Website Look And Feel When You Have More Than One Video
The Real Estate Video Manifesto
Interesting Real Estate Video Statistics: 2 Week Performance For A Property Tour
The Data Again Shows That YouTube STILL Isn't The Magic Elixir Even With Videos Shown Inline As Universal Search Results