The Web war between HomeAdvisor, Homestore and others is about to take a curious twist, with HomeAdvisor ready to announce on Monday that it will start featuring 360-degree virtual tours of celebrity homes on its site in an effort to drive traffic and build brand identity. Unannounced but already on the HomeAdvisor site is a virtual tour of international singing star Julio Iglesias’ $25 million jet, which the multi-lingual entertainer refers to as his "525 mph home." To get to the wrap-around photos, consumers click the "virtual tour" icon at the bottom of the HomeAdvisor homepage. The common theme of Web meisters everywhere is that "content is king" in driving eyeballs to Web sites. In real estate, that cliché historically has been interpreted as meaning "he with the most property ads wins." In that race, the Microsoft site remains barely half the size of its chief rival, REALTOR.com, operated by Homestore. REALTOR.com has some 1.3 million listings, compared to HomeAdvisor’s 750,000, and HomeSeeker’s 750,000. Largely because of its listing lead, Homestore has been able to claim the highest the number of page views and visitors to any real estate site. If HomeAdvisor becomes the Web site of the Stars, however, the hit numbers could start moving the other way. Microsoft product manager Ted Bremer says the virtual tour of the Iglesias jet, which apparently has been up on the site for past few days, already has caused a spike in HomeAdvisor traffic. "We were talking about how to add some sex appeal to the site that anyone would be interested in coming in and looking at," said Bremer. "Celebrities came up." "Microsoft had an existing (marketing) relationship with Julio Iglesias, so it was an easy thing to put together. We just took advantage of it to see if it would work." "The purpose is to bring people to the site and to get them to look at the virtual tours. We want to do things that get the site noticed. Get people talking about it." Bremer insists marketing, rather than listings, always has been at the core of HomeAdvisor’s efforts. "It's not the number of listings that matter," he says. "It's your ability to get people to the site and give them what they want: Direct contact information for the brokers and the agents. Without that it's like putting out a catelog without an 800 number for consumers to call." Bremer says celebrity home tours is only a clever way to get consumers used to visiting the site and doing things like taking the virtual tours. "People are going to look at these. Pictures matter. And we want brokers and agents to understand that HomeAdvisor is the best to work with on these things." Bremer said it had not been decided yet which celebrity to feature next. Microsoft has marketing relationships with a number of stars, including singer Mariah Carey and, of course, the Rolling Stones -- whose "Start Me Up" rock song was used to launch the Microsoft Network three years ago. Bremer declined to speculate, however, on whether there ever would be a virtual tour of Bill Gates multi-million dollar mansion on the site.