What do you do when Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Snapchat all take a dive into video advertising?

You dive in yourself, of course.

Which is exactly what Pinterest did last Wednesday. And why not? Video advertising is a  lucrative business, despite all the competition, so Pinterest decided to dive into the fray.

Here’s the good news for you.

What happens when there’s more supply than demand? More specifically, what happens when Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Snapchat and Pinterest all have video advertising offerings running at the same time?

You guessed it … prices remain low. At least until the demand exceeds the supply, which ain’t gonna happen any time soon.

So click any of these links for Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Snapchat or Pinterest and check out their video advertising platforms. Be sure to run tests to see which platform works best for your audience. Then rinse and repeat and start the process all over again.

Just when Pinterest video gets going, Facebook hits a bump on their video offerings.

It’s not a huge bump, and given that it’s Facebook, they’ll plow right through the challenge, but here’s the skinny.

According to the Wall Street Journal, “Facebook has been courting premium-content owners for its ‘Suggested Video’ feature and Facebook Live, it’s new live streaming product. Media companies want to join with Facebook to get in front of a massive pool of viewers on their phones, but they have serious concerns about Facebook’s proposed deal terms.”

What are media companies like the NFL and Disney upset about? Facebook wants its ad sales team to be in charge of selling ads against the TV companies videos. In other words, if the NFL strikes a deal for Facebook to run football games, then Facebook sales reps will be selling the ads, not NFL representatives.

The NFL doesn’t like that, so they’re pushing back, but Facebook is going to win this battle, folks. Ain’t no way in (bleep)* they’re giving up that kind of control.

In fact, I predict the NFL (and Disney) will cave in … three, two, one.

Has The Home Depot figured out a blended eCommerce/Bricks and Mortar model?

The biggest thing on the mind of retailers like Target, Wal-Mart, Lowes and Barnes & Noble over the past few years has been the steady increase in non-bricks-and-mortar sales.

For a long time, I figured this wasn’t a big problem because … well, people like getting out of the house, quite frankly. But over the course of time, the percentage of retail sales happening over the internet continues to creep up.

Check out the chart below:

Internet sales

Oh, sure, 8.1% doesn’t seem like a lot right now, but see the trajectory? That isn’t going to level off for 5 or 10 years, which means a growing percentage of sales are going to be happening online.

So what’s the problem with that?

After all, a sale is a sale, right? Wal-Mart doesn’t care if a sale happens in a bricks-and-mortar location or online because they still get the money, right?

Not so fast.

Wal-Mart owns a ton of real estate across the country. Each one of those locations requires a minimum amount of revenue in order to keep its doors open. Once the revenue falls below a certain minimum … kaput. The store closes its doors.

But then, along comes Home Depot with an updated model.

Now, when people order certain products via the Home Depot website, they can either 1) go to the store to pick it up themselves, or 2) wait for rapid delivery from a local store (rather than a far away distribution center).

It’s a pretty snazzy idea, if you ask me. After all, at a bare minimum, it saves time and shipping costs (if the buyer has it shipped from a local store). But wait! There’s more! If someone buys, say, a screen door from The Home Depot website and can stop by a nearby location to pick it up, what do they end up doing while they’re in the store?

You guessed it. The buy more stuff while they’re in the store. That makes Home Depot happy. That makes the customer happy. And people around the globe happy because the world economy doesn’t collapse.

FiberFix knocks it out of the park with a funny, engaging Facebook ad.

My friend Shelly Kramer who helps run V3B in Kansas City brought the following ad to my attention over the weekend. It’s a great product demo — keep watching. Funny as (bleep).**

See you again soon.

I’ll be providing news updates like this one one a regular basis moving ahead. And when I say “regular basis” I mean whenever it strikes my fancy. So if it never strikes my fancy in the future, you won’t be reading articles like this on the 60 Second Marketer.

But if you like it, let me know … maybe I’ll keep it going.

(Stranger things have happened, you know.)

* Somebody objected to my use of the word hell in last week’s post, so I bleeped it out this time.

** There’s that word again. Damn it.

About the Author: Jamie Turner is an internationally-recognized author, speaker, and business thought-leader. You’ll find him on the 60 Second Marketer and as an expert commentator on CNN. He is the founder of SIXTY, a marketing optimization firm that helps clients get more bang for their marketing buck. He is also the founder of the Mobile X Festival, an un-conference for businesses that want to use mobile to grow their sales and revenues. 

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