Memorial Day Weekend Advertising
March 19, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
The US Memorial Day Weekend flags the start of summer and the start of BBQ and Grilling season. In backyards across America, barbeques and grills are fired up for the first time after the winter chill. For those in the BBQ business it makes sense to undertake Memorial Day Weekend Advertising to drive sales of products.
Ideally your Memorial Day Weekend Advertising should start early to mid May generating branding and consumer interest initially, then gearing up for increased activity to the few days prior to the Memorial Day Weekend. Roadblock Advertising and Over the Page Advertising campaigns should also be considered over the Memorial Day Weekend days to help drive sales.
Highly focused at men, some of the products ideal for promoting over the Memorial Day Weekend include;
• BBQs and Grills
• Charcoal / Wood
• Lighter fuel
• Grilling utensils and accessories
• Steaks / Seafood
• BBQ Sauce / Hot Sauce
• Marinates
• Beer and Spirits
Your Memorial Day Weekend Advertising doesn’t have to be just about barbeques and grilling, there is also significant opportunities to target women with outdoor related products such as outdoor settings, tablecloths, BBQ crockery as well as specific ingredients like salad products, dressings and mustard.
Lastly and essential to every backyard barbeque on Memorial Day Weekend is wine. This is a great opportunity for a wine brand to do heavy advertising activity at the start of the season to make their wine the must have for every BBQ. By positioning your white or red wine as the essential BBQ wine, it will immediately become the must have for each and every BBQ. Make an impression here at the beginning of summer and consumers will use your wine throughout the entire summer period ensuring multi-month sales.
If you’d like to explore some of our advertising options forMemorial Day Weekend,start by downloading the Gourmet Ads Media Kit or by Requesting a Proposal from us.
Removing Websites
March 18, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
With campaign performance and return on investment high on our focus for advertisers, we’ve today removed two publishers (a blog and a website) that just haven’t been performing for our advertisers. It might sound peculiar for an advertising network to remove sites, but we felt it was in the best interest for all our advertisers.
It isn’t unusual for Gourmet Ads to remove sites from a campaign because they are not performing. In fact that’s the way we optimize campaigns by removing either an ad unit from a campaign or a publisher from a campaign. However this is the first time we’ve decided to systematically remove publishers from the Gourmet Ads network.
In the current economic climate, many advertisers are now looking for a combination of both branding and performance campaigns. With this in mind, it’s not only important for us to provide a relevant vertical in the food or wine space, but a platform that is geared for return on investment.
If you’d like to explore some of our advertising options, download the Gourmet Ads Media Kit or Request a Proposal from us.
Mid-Tail Advertising
March 17, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · 1 Comment
Take a quick think of where you visit on the Internet these days. Sure you visit Top 100 sites like CNN, ESPN and MSN but apart from those where else do you visit?
If you’re like most other people you’ll spend the majority of your time online on niche content sites and blogs. Why? Because this is where a great deal of content you’re interested in is being published these days. Its not in the large portal like sites, and it’s generally created by real people and not corporations. Online advertisers have started referring to these sorts of sites as the Mid-tail.
So what’s the Mid-tail of the Internet? It’s a collection of premium niche sites which produce great content and typically have between 50k to 10 million pages per month. So in the food space think of food blogs, food video sites, niche recipe websites and even web 2.0 applications like a recipe application for your iPhone. Some of the food sites in Gourmet Ads network are just about a particular topic like baking or cuisine like Mexican. They have dedicated and active audiences which participate in the conversation.
Many sites in the Mid-tail that Gourmet Ads represent have a cult like following with audiences visiting regularly throughout the month to read new content or participate. Some even attract users multiple times per day and bring them back by using site features such as RSS to deliver new content throughout the day.
Mid-tail Advertising is important for any advertising campaign because it brings your message to a wider audience than just advertising a top 100 site. Mid-tail sites deliver valuable audiences, and it’s these audiences which are generally much more engaged than those on major sites. What’s more they are more active and are often looking for the next big thing in their space. As more and more internet users are moving away from the portals and large top 100 sites, Mid-tail sites will be crucial for advertisers to include in their media plans.
From a financial perspective, advertising in the mid tail is often less expensive than advertising on a major site, and when running a campaign with Gourmet Ads, you can choose the sites and even ad placements. By doing hand selected ad placements your click though through and return on investment will be increased.
The advantages of Mid-tail Advertising are;
- Highly engaged audiences
- Sites are frequently visited
- Many sites have a cult like following
- Inexpensive CPM rates compared to large portals
- Audiences range from 50k to 10 million pages per month
So if you looking at running an advertising campaign and would like to include Mid-tail sites in the media plan, contact Gourmet Ads and we’ll develop a customised digital media plan for your consideration. Start by downloading the Gourmet Ads Media Kit or Request a Proposal from us.
Adify Widens Global Leadership Through Expansion in Australia
March 14, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
Continues Momentum with Celebrity Chef Benjamin Christie’s Gourmet Ads; Launches New Australian Networks AdTorque and Vertical Media
SAN BRUNO, CA, March 10, 2009 — Adify, the premier provider of vertical ad network management solutions, today announced the extension of its global leadership through rapid growth in the Australian market. Since Adify’s acquisition by Cox Enterprises in 2008, the company has dramatically expanded its global client base, powering more than 150 vertical ad networks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, and much more.
According to a recent IAB Australia report, online advertising in the country surpassed $1.7 billion in 2008, a 27 percent year-on-year growth. With geo targeting capabilities, and customizable international pricing, Adify’s platform is ideal for global Network Builders capitalizing in the emerging market, offering efficient means to execute successful advertising campaigns within the country and in various geographic regions around the world. Examples of Australian Network Builders powered by Adify include:
- Gourmet Ads : Founded by renowned Australian Celebrity Chef, Benjamin Christie, Gourmet Ads is the first Australian vertical advertising network focused on delivering major brand advertising to food, wine and beer enthusiasts.
- The AdTorque Network : The AdTorque Network is the leading Australian automotive advertising network serving both the local and international market.
- VerticalMedia | TRAVEL: With exclusive partnerships with some of Australia’s largest travel sites, VerticalMedia | TRAVEL is Australia’s only travel focused vertical ad network and is one of the fastest growing travel and holiday ad networks in the world.
“Online advertising is a global business, blind to the actual physical location of our Network Builders,” said Russ Fradin, president of Adify. “Long-tail culinary, automotive and travel sites are being sought out by luxury brand advertisers who want to ensure that their ads are running on premium sites populated not only by their target demographic, but by active and engaged audiences. Our Australian Network Builders have built an impressive collection of the type of top tier sites marketers want to target.”
“The sites in Gourmet Ads’ network are read around the world by people passionate about food, wine and beer around the world. Working with Adify helps assure our advertisers that the ads reaching our readers are not only relevant contextually, but geographically as well,” said Benjamin Christie, founder of Gourmet Ads.
Bolstering its Australian team, Adify added Trent Lloyd, a 12-year media and sales management veteran, as Head of Business Development. Lloyd was most recently at Fairfax Digital, where he successfully launched ad sales for some of the top digital properties in Australia. He has a proven track record of achieving revenue growth, developing and retaining key staff and maintaining strong client and agency relationships in the Australian marketplace.
Adify’s network management services and ad technology are used by publishers to execute successful, distributed advertising campaigns. Adify’s ad server, content syndication, tracking, reporting, billing, payment and technical support functions are relied upon by over 150 networks and more than 10,000 independent publishers. This open infrastructure delivers content sponsorships, video, image and rich media advertising to the unique specifications of each Network Builder.
Advertising Food Festivals
March 13, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
These days nearly every major city in the world runs some sort of food festival or major culinary event throughout the year. For many cities Culinary Tourism is an important element in the promotion of the city as a culinary destination. Apart from that, food festivals bring a great deal of economic benefits to cities including accommodation, transportation, dining out and more. With this in mind it’s important to heavily advertise your food festival to ensure record attendance.
For Food festivals which sell tickets, it’s important to start generate sales as soon as you’ve signed your sponsors and celebrity chefs who’ll be attending. This can be started by running highly targeted advertising campaigns targeted at online food communities encouraging pre-bookings. It’s these communities which are committed to traveling around and going to the food festivals throughout the year; no matter where they are located.
To reach these food communities, the Gourmet Ads network can run targeted advertising on food blogs, recipe websites and even food video sites to generate awareness and sales. For a campaign to drive food festival ticket sales we’d highly recommend a multi month campaign as well as some roadblock advertising close to the event to really drive home last minute ticket sales.
Depending on what the ticketing actually provides it’s ideal to run focused campaigns. For example if a number celebrity chefs will be doing cooking classes, you may wish to consider running exclusive campaigns around that celebrity chef till the tickets sell out. For gala dinners, these too could be a campaign focus for you. Just like popular musical artists, you want to generate sales and sell out as far out as you can before the event.
For regional or smaller food festivals which aren’t necessarily ticketed, the approach is slightly different. Your food festival advertising should be relatively short, i.e. like 10 – 14 days from the event but with high visibility. This will create high awareness of the food festival and will encourage attendance.
A strategy for gaining email addresses and generating buzz around an event is to run an online competition before the event. The prize could be say 20k worth of kitchen appliances or a complete kitchen make over. Entry is online and free, but the prize will be drawn a specific time and you need to be present in order to claim the price. This way you encourage people to attend the event.
Where possibly try and use rich media video to promote the event. Consumers find rich media highly engaging online and it could be one of the celebrity chefs cooking their signature dish. What ever you can get from their publicist would be a great instead of trying to shoot some video specifically for your event.
Finally, Food Festivals typically have lower advertising budgets to work with, but Gourmet Ads can work with you and your team to design a bespoke advertising package which will reach your target audience. A strategy to pitch to your possible sponsors is for them to underwrite the advertising of the event and even build their name into the event, like many food festivals do these days. That way they win, and you win as you’re generating a great deal of interest and one target for record attendance.
So no matter if you’re organising South Beach Wine and Food Festival in Miami, The Food and Wine Aspen Classic, The Rhode Island Clam Chowder Festival or a regional food festival. Gourmet Ads can help drive attendance and ticket sales. For more information about Gourmet Ads contact us or request a proposal.
Editorially Selected Sites
March 12, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
Nearly every advertising network on the internet especially the likes of Google Adwords and hundreds others have no idea of the sites in their network. This means that when you advertise through one of these networks you have no idea where your ad will appear. It’s referred to in the industry as blind buying. See a recent blog we wrote called We’re Not a Blind Media Buy.
Gourmet Ads is very different. Our network is made up of a combination of premium sites together with blogs and video sites and we use a human algorithm to determine if they are suitable, ie one of Gourmet Ads team scours over the sites that apply. Each site is thoroughly assessed during the application period in regards to their editorial style, look, feel, branding, positioning, and content. Lastly we look at that their suitability for running advertising. Some sites might have great content but if they may not be suitable for advertisers. An example of this is a site which doesn’t have any ad positions above the fold. Of all the sites that apply the fact is that we reject about 65-70%, mostly because they aren’t even closely related to any of our verticals.
By having strict publisher eligibility standards in place enables us to provide and guarantee advertisers and advertising agencies a premium destination to market their products. Although we may change our publisher eligibility from time to time, we pretty much look for;
- Theme of the site must strictly be related to food, wine or beer
- Have strong US, Australian, UK or Canadian audiences.
- Must be actively creating rich and highly engaging content
- Attract over 5,000 monthly page views
- Ideally operate on its own top-level domain like blogname.com (not free hosted)
- Be written in English
- Have advertisements above the fold
If you are interested in learning more about the Gourmet Ads network for your next advertising campaign, download our media kit or request a proposal.
Advertising your Winery Website
March 9, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
So you’ve spent time and budget on developing your winery website. Your winery site has all the bells and whistles from the latest ecommerce system through to inventory management and point of sales software integration. There is also a wide range of delivery methods, as well as all the wines which are for sale, including the latest vintage as well as the reserve vintage. Your winery site has it all. So what’s the next step?
For many wineries, one of the most important steps is often forgotten about when developing a winery website. The advertising plan. The advertising plan is about how you plan to reach your target consumers and drive wine sales on the site. Your winery advertising plan should include information on;
- Target Market
- Location of ideal customer
- Advertising Message
- Launch Promotion
- Budget
Driving new customers to your site is what it’s about and having an online advertising campaign is the logical medium to start with, given that you are promoting your website. The aim should be to advertise where possible consumers are engaging online, which is why advertising in a vertical advertising network such as Gourmet Ads is ideal.
Gourmet Ads has the ability to run online advertising locally, nationally or internationally depending on the target you wish to reach. Apart from reaching wine consumers and wine connoisseurs we can reach also reach food communities as well through our food vertical. If you’d like for Gourmet Ads to develop an advertising plan for your winery, request a proposal from us and we’ll help you drive sales online.
Not only Food, Wine and Beer
March 7, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
If you’re advertising any sort of food, wine or beer product, then Gourmet Ads is the most relevant advertising platform for you. This is because we manage the advertising on food wine ane beer sites and blogs. So it’s logical to use our advertising network to reach your target audience. But the Gourmet Ads network is much more than that. We have a unique and unduplicated audience which is great for advertising a range of products to.
We say that our audience lives to eat, but they also like to travel, look great, stay healthy and look stylish. Typically our audience is female aged between 27 and 55 years old, but there a few exceptions to the rule. So we’ve put together a short breakdown of sectors which perform well on the Gourmet Ads network and how we would position them for your campaign.
Travel
Food and wine go hand in hand with travel which is why both our food and wine verticals are ideal for running your next advertising campaign. Because we reach the household decision maker, it’s these people which not only make decisions about what to buy for dinner, they also heavily contribute to the decision of where they go on vacation. By using some of our retargeting and behavioural targeting options, running a travel advertising campaign with Gourmet Ads is much more cost effective than running your advertising campaign through a dedicated travel vertical advertising network.
Women’s Fashion
Our food vertical is predominately female, so Women’s Fashion is a logical fit with this audience. So no matter if you’re a designer, supermarket, mall or fashion retailer your campaign will reach your target market. Our audience likes to be at the forefront of culinary trends and no doubt they like to ear the latest fashions. Be sure to have lots of visuals or rich media to promote your fashion.
Entertainment
Both TV and Movie studios are always looking for cost effective avenues to promote their latest TV show or movie. Depending if the show or movie is aimed at a female or male demographic, we can serve the ads accordingly. However most of the entertainment campaigns we’ve run seem to always choose run of network when running branding campaigns because of the wide reach they offer.
Cosmetic and Skin Care
Ideally running in our food vertical, cosmetic and skin care companies will find they have the ability to target different age groups with their cosmetic and skin care product advertising campaigns. By using behavioural targeting together with the food vertical you could run different advertising depending on the age group. So you could target the 30′s age group with Hydration products, the 40′s Anti wrinkle and 50′s Intense Anti Ageing products.
Automotive
Unlike dedicated automotive vertical advertising networks such as AdTorque, Gourmet Ads offers automotive related companies two specific audiences. Car companies who run advertising around small cars aimed at women will find our food vertical an ideal platform to talk with potential female buyers. Whereas luxury car companies will be interested in our wine vertical which has a much older male demographic, which more inline with their target market. Both food and wine verticals would be also be interested in green or hybrid related advertising campaigns.
Pharmaceutical / Over the Counter Medication
Many Pharmaceutical companies can find it hard to located related inventory to some of their products online. However advertising through the Gourmet Ads Food vertical will reach a very female audience of consumers that want so stay healthy. Some Pharmaceutical medication that treat a range of symptoms or illness such as diabetes, acid reflux / heart burn, constipation, irritable bowel syndrome, menopause, and headaches / pain would all perform well, when advertised through the food vertical.
Baby / Maternity
Moms and moms to be will definitely be part of our everyday food vertical, but internally we’ve recently started categorising sites that have a baby / mom focus. This allows you to delve deeper into dedicate food sites which have a specific mom focus. Some will be about foods to feed your baby as well as toddlers.
Cleaning Products
Our audience of household decision makers and main grocery buyers is ideal when advertising any sort of cleaning products for around the house. Apart from kitchen related cleaning products, any sort of consumer package goods like laundry powder, carpet cleaner, bathroom and toilet cleaner is ideal. Household appliances also would perform will so items such as washing machines, dryers, vacuum cleaners etc.
Finally and most importantly, some of the sectors mentioned above like travel and automotive particularly are seen as an expensive CPM buy. Its essential to remember that when they are on travel or automotive sites they are generally at the end of the buying or research cycle. The consumer either knows where they want to travel to or are working out which car to buy. When advertising in a network like Gourmet Ads it’s about brand awareness and capturing possible customers at the beginning of the conversation. As such Gourmet Ads network will be less expensive than your typical travel or automotive focused ad network.
If you’re tasked with advertising and promoting any of the sectors mentioned above and want more information about strategies on how to reach new and unduplicated audiences, contact us or request a proposal.
Trip to the USA
March 6, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
Later this month from the 20th March through to the 11th April I’ll be in the US visiting a number of cities and meeting with media buyers and media planners for upcoming summer advertising campaigns. The dates of the trip are as follows;
- Chicago – 20th – 25th March
- New York – 26th March – 1st April
- Las Vegas – 1st April – 6th April
- Los Angeles – 6th April – 10th April
If you’d like to catch-up while I am in US, please contact us and we’ll work out a time to meet.
Advertising Cookbooks
March 5, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
Like most book publishers, cookbook publishers have seen a decline in sales over the past few years. As margins in book publishing have slipped, so have the budgets for marketing and publicity. To combat these reduced budgets, cookbook publishers have sought strategies to create hype when launching a cookbook. This is why we’ve recently begun to see publishers advertise new cookbooks online.
The key to advertising cookbooks online is to quickly create hype around the cookbook release and sell as many copies as fast as possible. So what’s the strategy to Advertising Cookbooks online?
As online retailers such as Amazon and Barnes and Noble begin to offer pre-release sales, a soft campaign should be launched on relevant and related sites. At this stage the advertising campaign should only serve just a few ad impressions per user per day. The key initially is to create general awareness and sales in the weeks to the lead up of the release.
Two or three days prior to the release of the cookbook, a more intense branding campaign should be commenced, possibly with different advertising creative. The ideal creative at this stage should be rich media with video interviews of the cookbook author or even just imagery of the recipes. Its about gaining attention and engagement with consumers.
Then the day before the cookbook is released, roadblock advertising should be undertaken, coupled with strategically placed Over the Page Advertising to get attention. This sort of intense advertising activity will generate a great deal of interest and sales, providing a quick return on investment for the publisher and hopefully a 2nd reprint of the cookbook. Remember it isn’t just about generating online sales, some consumers will still buy the book in a typical bookstore. The digital advertising is about getting the cookbook title and cover out there to an audience of consumers.
Sounds a lot of activity for a cookbook? Well not really. Compare this to taking outdoor, newspaper and magazine advertising and you’ll be surprised that cookbook advertising online is much more cost effective compared to other mediums. Remember the strategy hasn’t been to promote the cookbook to everyone. The advertising has been highly targeted at possible consumers and in this case, regular viewers of food websites and food blogs.
Online Advertising through a channel such as Gourmet Ads is ideal for any cookbook or cooking magazine release. So, if you’re a publishing executive and you’re currently charged with developing a publicity and media plan for a cookbook release, request a proposal from the team at Gourmet Ads.
