London Agency Roadshow
November 30, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
Gourmet Ads continues to expand it’s highly successful food network around the globe and as such we’ll be in London for 1 week, from the 25th of January 2010 through to 30th, conducting an Advertising Agency Road Show. If you’re a media agency with clients in the food and drink sector, then we’d like to meet with you while we are in London.
Gourmet Ads already reaches millions of grocery buyers throughout the United Kingdom. We do this by running advertising on niche, hand selected sites, including recipe websites and food blogs, targeted to UK audiences.
To organise a meeting with our advertising sales team, please contact us or ring Jonny Byrne on +44 (0)20 3159 4113 to schedule an appointment.
For more information visit www.gourmetads.co.uk
Monetize Your Food Blog
November 29, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
Ok, so you’ve created a food blog and writing interesting unique and interesting content and you’re starting to get good traffic to the site. So next you’re thinking about how to Monetize Your Food Blog. Well there are lots of solutions out there for monetizing your food blog, so I thought I’d a short blog on what we look for and what we need in order to have you as part of our food advertising network.
- Ideally you need to have your food blog on its own top-level domain like blogname.com (not free hosted). This is really important as most brand advertisers are not interested in advertising on “blogging platforms”
- Your food blog needs to be designed or you’ve used a well designed theme. If you’re using WordPress, we don’t want to see a stock standard food blog. It fact these days we’ll reject food blogs who haven’t made any sort of effort.
- You must be prepared to have at least 2 ads above the fold. This is essential for advertisers as the majority of clicks occur at the top of the page. You may need to re-design areas of your site to achieve this.
- Privacy Policy – rather essential these days to have one. Particular advertisers will only run their ads on sites which publish a privacy policy, see here for more it here.
- Gourmet Ads supports IAB size ads (728 x 90, 300×250 and 160 x 600) which are our standard sizes. However there’s a great deal of demand on non IAB sized ads also from advertisers. So Food Bloggers need to be prepared to run Interstitials, Over the Page ads etc.
- Although most of the sites in the network have solid traffic, your food blog needs to have over 5000 pages a month of traffic which equates to about 1000-1500 people per month.
Finally, we’re always looking for premium publishers to join the Gourmet Ads Network, however we thoroughly review all publisher applications which apply. By having strict publisher eligibility standards it enables us to attract premium advertisers, which in turn provide publishers high-quality, visually appealing advertising creative that is relevant to your audience.
To be considered as a publisher you can apply to the Gourmet Ads Network here.
728 x 90
November 28, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
The 728 x 90 is often referred to as the Leaderboard and typical placements are at the top of the page either above the content or within the header itself. The 728 x 90 is popular with types of sites and food blogs because they can neatly be place on top of the designed page and look they like it was designed to be there.
Gourmet Ads often run expandable 728 x 90 creative where the expandable section drop down.
Points of the 728 x 90
- Popular with both sites and food blogs
- Usually placed above content or in the header
- Can be run as an expandable unit or standard unit
- Approved IAB Unit
Here’s a sample of the 728 x 90, which is overhanging in to the side bar because it wasn’t designed to be placed here.
Need Gourmet Ads Creative Specifications?
Standard Creative Specifications
Expandable Creative Specifications
160 x 600
November 28, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
160 x 600 is often referred to as the Skyscraper or Wide Skyscraper and placements are typically at the top, middle left or middle right. They are popular with food blogs because of the natural design of a blog allowing a 160 x 600 to be placed in their side navigation or beside content and comments.
The 160 x 600 is ideal for widgets, allowing the widget to be deployed over a standard ad unit.
Points of the 160 x 600
- Popular with food blogs
- Usually placed beside content
- Can be run as an expandable unit or standard unit
- Ideal for widgets and types of rich media
- Approved IAB Unit
Need Gourmet Ads Creative Specifications?
Standard Creative Specifications
Expandable Creative Specifications
300 x 250
November 27, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
Sample 300 x 250 Ad Unit
The 300x 250 is often referred to as the MREC, Media Rectangle or Island Ad unit is one of best performing ad units. Because of its dimensions, the 300 x 250 is ideal for in unit video, simply because it is much like a 4:3 TV screen. The 300 x 250 is also popular with widgets, allowing the widget to be deployed over a standard ad unit.
300 x 250 Placements are typically top left, middle left or within content.
Points of the 300 x 250
- Generally one of the highest performing ad units on the network
- Can be run as an expandable unit or standard unit
- Ideal for in unit video placement
- Ideal for widgets
- Ideal for all types of rich media
- Approved IAB Unit
Need Gourmet Ads Creative Specifications?
Standard Creative Specifications
Expandable Creative Specifications
Adverlicious
November 26, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
We recently published a blog on Creative Advertising which talked about ideas on how you can better develop better performing advertising creative for your campaigns. So in addition to this, we thought it might be good to point you to a collection of ads for inspiration, which is where Adverlicious comes in. So what is Adverlicious you might ask? Well Adverlicious is an online archive of advertising (some might refer to as banners).
Its considered the the world’s largest archive of online advertising. Adverlicious collects and categorizes all sort of online ads so marketers, designers, and others can study and discuss what works (and what doesn’t). This hobby site was started by James Gardner and there are literally thousands of ads in all sorts of sizes.
What I like about Adverlicious is the way that every ad is tagged with not only its topic like automotive or CPG, but the size as well.
It’s a great site especially for designers who have brain strain and need design inspiration.
Check it out http://adverlicio.us
Reaching Working Moms
November 25, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
Everyone knows that all moms work tirelessly, but working moms are additionally time poor. So apart from the daily grind at the office, there is the cleaning at home, getting kids to school, cooking and the grocery buying. Because working moms have more on their plate than most, reaching them can be difficult.
Because working moms are time poor, reaching them at keys times they are online is essential which is why advertising on Gourmet Ads is essential for reaching working moms. It could be from either home or work, but working moms use the internet to research on meal ideas and look for recipes. They’ll be seeking recipes which are quick and easy. It’s here where Gourmet Ads can help create the engagement with working moms.
Reaching working moms successfully can boost sales for your products. Be sure to advertise with a network which reaches working moms, and then ensure you create specific campaigns aimed at working moms. Campaign ideas that would strike a cord with working moms include;
- Food Products that will save time (pre-prepared sides for example)
- Ingredients which featured easy to cook recipes (packed cake mixes)
- Coupons which will provide discounts off food items and household items
- Home Delivery services
Don’t forget working moms will still be interested in healthy food options for the family, so don’t neglect this in your creative messaging.
If you’re interested in advertising to working moms, then request a proposal from Gourmet Ads or download a copy of our media kit and we’ll help you start reaching your target audience.
Creative Advertising
November 24, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
At Gourmet Ads, we’re loading up and sending advertising campaigns live everyday. One of the most common things we see is poorly designed advertising creative. What I mean is that it’s either poorly designed from a creative perspective or the messaging isn’t that clear and straight to the point. Both of which can have a negative effect on the ultimate performance of a campaign.
It’s unfortunate but sometimes advertising agencies and food companies spend more time on researching where they are going to buy media placements, than the advertising creative. In fact many of the advertising agencies we deal with only perform the media planning and buying part of the campaign after another agency has done the creative. At the end of the day a well designed advertisement with clear messaging will perform in a closely related environment, but what we know is, bad creative won’t perform.
So here are some things to think about from a creative aspect next time your running a food advertising campaign;
Have your advertising designed by a professional
Many small and medium sized businesses try and design their own ads in Photoshop or attempt to use Flash. But having your ads designed by a professional will make a huge difference and a set of three ads isn’t expensive. We often help agencies who are on limited budgets get their creative done. If you need creative designed for your next campaign, please contact us and we’ll provide a quote.
Have a Creative Advertising Brief
Advertising agencies specialise in developing the messaging, story board and design and present this as a complete Creative Advertising Brief. But if you don’t have an agency, you’ll need to develop these for the design team to use. Any professional creative design team will require a brief in order to move forward. If you need a Creative Advertising Brief template, just contact us and we’ll send you our template.
Messaging including Call to Actions
One of the most important aspects with advertising creative is to have a clear message with calls to action. Tell the audience what they need to do in order to engage (eg “Click Here” or “Roll Over for Coupon”) with the advertising. If your goal is to have a high click through rate (CTR) then say click here. Don’t just expect the audience to know how to engage. Before heading to design, make sure you test the messaging with your target audience. This can help re-doing your creative or having terrible campaign reports.
Size limits on creative
It’s important to note that the smaller the file size the quicker the ad will load on the audience’s website. At Gourmet Ads we can take creative up to 100k in size; however we recommend keeping the file size down to 40k-50k which will ensure that it loads fast.
Finally, Gourmet Ads works with a design team who used to work on US President Barak Obama’s online campaign as well as automotive and entertainment clients. I’m constantly surprised by the output from this team together with the creative being design on time and on budget. No surprises.
If you need creative designed for your next campaign, please contact us and we’ll provide a quote.
Targeted Advertising
November 21, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
There is no doubt that Targeted Advertising when done correctly is the most effective way reach your target audience. Here at the Gourmet Ads network, we provide companies the ability reach the Grocery Buyer online when they are making meal decisions for their family. Just by advertising on our vertical network the advertiser is already targeted their audience. However, most advertisers choose to apply additional targeting to their campaigns.
So to illustrate some of the industry standard targeting options available on the Gourmet Ads network we thought we’d put together a quick presentation.
2010 Advertising Trends
November 20, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · 8 Comments
Last year we wrote a blog called 2009 Advertising Trends where we looked gave a somewhat forecast of what we thought the trends would be. Some things we got right, others we didn’t. Certainly 2009 for most advertising companies is a year they’d rather put behind them.
So looking forward into next year, we thought we should but together a list again, this time with our 2010 advertising trends we think will happen in 2010. Some are from foundations of things that we’ve seen in mid to late 2009, others are purely speculative.
Any way we’d like to get your thoughts and comments on our 2010 Advertising Trends predictions. Because its 2010 we thought 10 would be a good number to start with, so here they are;
1. Media Buying via Vertical Ad Networks
We saw during 2009 a great deal of media buyers and media planners starting to include more vertical advertising networks into their client media plans. There is no question that Vertical Ad networks are an efficient means to reach niche audiences. So we believe that this trend will continue into 2010 and beyond. The key for all vertical ad networks (including us here at Gourmet Ads) is to ensure that we continue to deliver value for money on premium sites, whilst ensuring we provide quality audiences, reach and creative execution for all media buys.
2. Increased Online Media Spending
We’ve already seeing an increase in the budgets for 2010 RFP’s during Q4 in 2009. Companies and their advertising agencies that were only doing short term media buying are already asking for 12 month plans for 2010. We believe that as companies continue to reduce their TV, Radio and Print budgets they’ll be seeking to reach consumers online where the metrics can be measured. We’ve even heard from food companies that previously didn’t have an online strategy hiring digital teams and/or digital agencies.
3. Pre Roll Video
During 2009 we had a lot of agency folks indicate they were testing various video formats for clients. Some tested in-unit video, standalone video, pre roll, mid roll, post roll and video on interstitials. Agencies are now indicating that what is working for them is pre roll video and preferably with a companion ad. So we expect during 2010 that we’ll see increased demand for pre roll video inventory.
4.Increased spending by FMCG & CPG
This was a key advertising trend prediction last year and we’ve started to see this happen. Although some campaigns I question the messaging and creative, but overall many of the large FMCG / CPG companies are now actively spending online and consistently from month to month. We’re predicting we’ll see a raft of small to mid sized companies move to online in 2010 where they can easily compete with large FMCG / CPG companies, possibly on a localised / geo targeted basis.
5. Beyond the Banner / Non IAB Sizes
Throughout 2009 the buzz word on nearly every RFP was “Beyond the Banner” and we don’t think this will change as we head into 2010. We believe that advertisers will be asking for more Non IAB units as part of campaigns from simple logos to standalone rich media. So what kind of Beyond the Banner / Non IAB Sizes solutions excite advertisers? Try changeable backgrounds, recipes integrations, brand integrations and widgets to name a few. Additionally we’ll see these booked for longer periods such as 12 months or at least by the quarter.
6. Behavioral Targeting & Retargeting
If you’re at Adtech New York recently you would have noticed the vast amount of companies offering both Behavioral Targeting and Retargeting solutions. I even heard of one company that said vertical networks don’t have to have recruit publishers just gain access to pixels on people’s computers! We’re running more and more long term campaigns which include Behavioral Targeting of some sort. They are great for ecommerce sites and anywhere where conversions are critical. and we expect this advertising trend to continue well into 2010 and beyond.
7. CPM rates increase
We’re already seeing CPM rates increase in Q3 and Q4 2009. CPM rates for the most part are back at sensible levels compared to early 2009 when they were extremely under valued. Major publisher had to significantly discount. Although some markets are taking longer to recover than others, CPM rates across the globe are certainly increasing or are stable.
8. Interstitial Advertising
We touched on this above under Beyond the Banner / Non IAB Sizes. As brands are looking for higher visibility in more non IAB units, Interstitials are a great way to deliver them and we believe that during 2010 more advertisers will be requesting them. They’ve been the secret for many direct response advertisers for sometime because of their high click through rates as well as engagement rates. Its not always inbound interstitials, some of our publishers who provide gateway content are offering outbound interstitials. Finally, don’t just expect to see static or rich media on Interstitials. We expect to see more 10 and 15 second video being used on Interstitials as advertisers look at more high profile avenues to engage with audiences.
9. More Coupon based Campaigns
Given the economic climate of 2009 we saw a great deal of brand campaigns which include some sort of discount coupon. For the most part these Coupon based campaigns have performed extremely well and we expect this advertising trend to continue in 2010. The majority of coupon campaigns have been run by large food companies, however we believe that in 2010 we’ll see smaller food companies and even wine companies using these sort of tactics to drive sales. Expect to see even more and more ecommerce sites using this tactic to drive sales.
10. Gourmet Ads will be the largest Food Network globally
Obviously as I’m in the driving seat, I can say with confidence that Gourmet Ads will continue to grow in our key markets of America, UK, Canada and Australia. Apart from this we’ll also start to see other markets emerge in Europe and Asia. We’ll continue to recruit quality publishers with fantastic audiences ensuring that campaigns perform.
We’d love to get your feedback on some of our 2010 Advertising Trends. So feel free to leave a comment.
