Private Ad Exchange Business Continues to Grow

We launched the Gourmet Ads Marketplace (our Private Ad Exchange) back in early November and at the time RTB, DSP, SSP were all buzzwords for us as we embarked on this project. There was of course the fear of cannibalizing our premium revenue. With this specifically in mind, the plan from outset, was for me, as the Managing Director to be the project manager of the Private Ad Exchange business. I also from a personal level wanted to learn as much as I could about the RTB space.

It’s been really interesting journey so far for me and the team are learning more and more each day about working with Agency Trading Desks, DSP and Retargeters.

We’re now at the 4 month mark, so I thought I’d share a few points about my learnings so far about running a private ad exchange business.

So here are my thoughts;

Buyers are not competing with Premium Display Campaigns

Our initial concern which we shared with others was that by starting a private exchange we would be cannibalizing our premium display business. Well, I’m happy to say it just hasn’t happened. Both our premium and private exchange businesses are booming. RFPs and Insert Orders are up on the premium side and we’ve got some great partners in the exchange buying every day. We find on a while that the private exchange buyers are indeed very different from typical agency media buyers. Most campaigns in the exchange have wide brand reach requirement (we were never going to be RFP’d for the campaigns anyway as they are mostly non endemic) or they have a strong DR focus or finally they are simply retargeting using data. For all of these buyers, private ad exchange buying favours their own business models better than your typical fixed IO buying for the most part. Effectively they can dip in and test inventory pools very quickly, then stop if the campaign is not working or increase if conversations or engagement rates are positive.

11 partners Private Ad Exchange Buyers

We’ve got some absolutely great partners already.  The general makeup of the exchange is as such ;

• Agency Trading Desks
• Major DSPs
• Company Direct / Brand Advertisers
• Retargeters

We are actively seeking a few more partners right now as we are expanding the inventory available and growing the users.

Limited Food Buyers in RTB
We’ve noticed that across the board the largest exchange buyers on the exchange are non endemic food brands. There are of course a handful of food brands buying, most of which are major international food brands. Where we have noticed food brands buying we’ve reached out to suggest ways we can offer them more inventory or provide them a custom solution. To date we’ve not yet seen any supermarkets buying on RTB. However the majority of buyers are running campaigns aimed at women for lifestyle, travel, automotive, telecommunications, government (federal and state) or retail brands.

Buyers and their buying volumes vary daily
Trying to predict who will buy and how much they will buy each day has been really difficult. A senior manager at another Vertical Ad Network ( ie like Gourmet Ads ) told me last year that he felt the hardest part of running a private ad exchange was managing demand from buyers. This has been the greatest learning curve for our team. For now we seem to have this managed the daily buying flow well. Right now seasonality does plan a large role.

Interest outside of the USA
It was always our intention of growing the private ad exchange outside of the USA. However we didn’t really imagine that demand would be all that strong out of the USA. We were wrong. As such we’ve slowly started to open up the Gourmet Ads Marketplace to Australian, UK and Canadian buyers, with a few other countries not too far behind… Australia seems to be the most active right now for us, but watch this space as I think Europe will become very strong next quarter from conversations I’ve had recently.

Technical hurdles
Initially we had some hiccups getting started, but like with most things in the digital ad space, these are now sorted out. That said most buyers now are able to get going in less than 48 hours. We do sometimes have issues when our buyers are not buying us through our SSP directly but we can usually find an integration partner or 3rd Party DSP that can make the connection work.

70% + of buyers are using data
When talking to our partners, the majority of them are using some sort of data when buying which is around what we had forecasted. They are either using simple demographic (age and gender) targeting or they are doing heavy up targeting using first party data or third party data. I think this is the greatest fundamental difference between the IO side of the business and the RTB side of the business. Buyers can use First Party Data or Third Party Data easily and in a protected environment buying the audience they actually want, opposed to the entire audience.

Start a Conversation about our Private Ad Exchange

Finally, if you’d like to have a conversation about becoming a buyer or becoming involved with the Gourmet Ads Marketplace, then please contact me through our Contact Page and let’s start a conversation.

Private Ad Exchange Update is a blog post from Gourmet Ads Food Advertising network, providing Display Advertising , Video Advertising and Supermarket Advertising solutions to reach the Grocery Buyer online.

We’re in the Digital Advertising LUMAscapes

So it was pleasing to see that Gourmet Ads has now been included in the latest Digital Advertising LUMAscape,
under Vertical Ad Networks.

Gourmet Ads in LUMAscapes is a blog post from Gourmet Ads Food Advertising network, providing Display Advertising , Video Advertising and Supermarket Advertising solutions to reach the Grocery Buyer online.

Food Marketing to Reach Grocery Buyers

No matter if you’re a small food manufacturers or multi-national food company Gourmet Ads has food marketing solutions to have your products run off the supermarket shelf.

Our food marketing programs have been designed to reach the household grocery buyer online. We do this by maintaining a large community of quality food sites such as recipe websites, food blogs, and other endemic food centric sites all frequently visited by the household grocery buyer. Grocery Buyers visit our food and recipe sites while researching meals ideas and making household meal decisions for the family. By running a food marketing campaign aimed towards the grocery buyer you influence what they put in the trolley at the supermarket. Imagine consumers search out your product, opposed to simply stumbling over it while shopping.

Digital Food Marketing Solutions

As large or small as your budget permits. Our food marketing solutions we provide start with regular display advertising units such as 300×250 or 728×90 sized banners. For food advertisers with larger budgets we can provide Beyond the Banner activity such as Roadblocks, Background Skins and Over the Page advertising, all providing maximum impact and reach for clients.

For more information about Gourmet Ads or our Food Marketing Programs, Request a Media Kit, or if you’re interested in running a food advertising campaign then Request A Proposal from our team.

Food Marketing is a blog post from Gourmet Ads Food Advertising network, providing Display Advertising , Video Advertising and Supermarket Advertising solutions to reach the Grocery Buyer online.

Advertising Trends for 2012 from Gourmet Ads

For the past 4 years, and as the year comes to a close, I’ve looked forward to the future trying to predict what the Advertising Trends for the year ahead will be. Looking back I think for the most part I’ve predicted the advertising trends rather well. That said I’ll be the first to say that we’ve got some predictions wrong, but for the most part I think I’ve been on the money. My advertising trend predictions are simply derived from what we as a company are seeing in-market.

So here are our Advertising Trends for 2012

1. Real Time Bidding Budgets to Increase
Real Time Bidding Budgets was something I predicted last year and again it’s my number 1 advertising trend prediction for 2012. Why? Well late in 2011, Gourmet Ads launched our private ad exchange called the Gourmet Ads Marketplace. Since then we’ve had an amazing response to real time bidding and if anything we’ve started to see many more advertisers start buying media like this. As the year came to a close, we spoke to all our major media buying partners and not one of them said that budgets were going backwards. Nearly all of them said they will have many more advertising clients in 2012.

2. Media Buying with Data
Just like Real Time Bidding, we also mentioned Data in last year’s advertising trends. In 2011 the buzz term by Q2 was DMP (data management platform), now if you believe everything you read in the digital press, DMPs will be no longer around in 2012. Then there is the debate of 1st Party Data vs 3rd Party Data and I’m not going anywhere near that.

Our prediction is that digital media buying using some sort of data will grow significantly in 2012. I think it’s the sole motivation for advertisers contemplating a move to real time bidding platforms, i.e. the fact they can pair the media buy up with data and then buy the impressions they actually want at scale. Once advertisers have developed a clear use of their own 1st Party Data sets and can begin to only buy the impressions they want we will see continued growth in data.

3. Mobile Advertising to Grow
During Q3 in 2011 we started seeing questions on both the advertiser and publisher sides regarding mobile advertising. We had advertisers asking about inventory and publishers asking about demand ( which is always great). When publishers in the food space are asking our publisher team about mobile advertising because their building an App or dedicated mobile site, then 2012 will be all about mobile. We saw during 2012 a number of supermarkets launch iPhone and Android apps which have been highly successful with consumers. See Woolworths in Australia which have a great mobile app. As a company we too have invested in mobile. Our development team is currently working on the RecipeBridge Mobile site which is scheduled to be launched in January 2012. Mobile content aside, I wonder if we’ll see better quality mobile advertising from advertisers in 2012. It does seem that text ads are still the main type of creative used on mobile devices.

4. Branded Recipes
During 2011 we saw a major advertising trend from food manufactures and some supermarkets seeking to integrate their branded recipes on our network publisher sites. I would say nearly every RFP we received requested some sort of recipe integration as part of the media plan. We believe this is only the beginning for Branded Recipes. Observing this trend, Gourmet Ads developed our own platform for branded recipes on RecipeBridge.com, where we add all the recipes of a brand into the RecipeBridge site. Then when people search for a recipe such as “fondant recipe” then brands with fondant recipes will be displayed alongside other recipe sites, where consumers can then click through to the brands website for the ingredients, cooking method and presentations.
Early in 2012, Gourmet Ads will be announcing the launch of our Brand Solutions on RecipeBridge to help brands get more exposure for their branded recipes to household grocery buyer.

5. Video Advertising
Video Advertising for the digital advertising industry in 2011 was huge. If you don’t think it was you’ve been on another planet. I recall sitting @ Digiday New York in November and watching the “State of the Industry on Digital Video” report and being amazed by nearly every statistic being presented. This is why I’m adding it as an Advertising Trend in 2012.

Why the huge recent growth in Video Advertising? There are a number of answers why. It’s so very similar to buying television and advertisers (and their advertising agencies) understand how to buy TV media. Engagement rates are consistently solid (notice I didn’t mention click through rates). Creative is rather standard now. Most video advertisers are using a 15 or 30 second pre roll video together with a 300×250 Companion Ad using either VAST or VPAID formats. We’ve also seen in 2011 more non linear advertising solutions come to market.

For Gourmet Ads, Video Advertising was the fastest growing section of our business in 2011. We’ve seen huge demand from advertisers and we don’t think this will subside anytime soon. We believe that video based revenue will increase significantly for the company over the next year or so. That said, there are still lots of challenges for video. Lack of quality video inventory is one. We’ve worked hard to build a large collection of Cooking Videos on Tastydays. The second is the technical requirements needed to setup a publisher to accept video pre roll ads. We have made some great progress with our own video hosting platform for publishers, but more education is required.

6. The 300×600 Ad Size
There is something to say for big things and the 300×600 is one the largest display ad sizes available with many calling it the “half page ad unit” Not only from a creative aspect is there lots of room to get the message across, but in our testing we’ve seen engagement rates from 3 to 10 times better than regular display sizes.
Over the past 6 months we’ve slowly started to see more advertisers ask for the 300×600 size and given the great performance of the unit, we believe that in 2012 will see more advertisers using this size.

7. Vertical Ad Networks will Continue to Grow
As I had predicted last year, there was plenty of consolidation across the digital advertising ecosystem. We saw video companies acquire other video advertising companies, we saw ad networks acquire other ad networks and major web portals continue buying investment that make sense them. What we didn’t see was any acquisitions of Vertical Ad Networks in 2012.
Many in the Digital Press predicted that Vertical Ad Networks will die a slow death, which really cracks me up. Gourmet Ads which just focus on Food Advertising are very much alive and kicking. We’ve seen amazing growth again this year and are looking forward to continued growth in 2012. I’m often talking to my peers at other vertical ad networks and all report solid growth and revenues. Gourmet Ads in 2011 strengthened our inventory by investing in RecipeBridge and I know other networks have been quietly acquiring more web properties and inventory which they can call their own.
So yes, I’m predicting that Vertical Networks will continue to grow in 2012.

7. CPG Brands to Increase Budgets

Again an advertising trend we mentioned last year and the year before. We saw a number of new advertisers in the CPG space in 2011 and we’re already seen new brands at major CPGs advertising for the first time. That said we would like all CPGs to start using online. In 2011 we started to see CPGs run longer campaigns, compare to previous years where they were just concentrating on Q4, then going dark for the rest of the year.

We have two predictions as an advertising trend in 2012, is that we’re going to see smaller to mid sized companies move to online in 2012 where they can easily compete with large FMCG / CPG companies, possibly more so on a localized / geo targeted basis.

8. Contextual Advertising for Food Advertisers 

Another advertising trend we’ve seen from food advertisers in 2011 is the request to advertise on pages where recipe content is closely related or is contextually relevant. We’re predicting this will continue into 2012 as some advertisers want to only reach the exact target each and every time.

An example of contextual advertising for foods would be say a seafood company running a campaign for salmon and they only wanted to advertise on pages where salmon was being mentioned. Pages might be smoked salmon recipes or grilled salmon recipes. Now this is relatively easy for a single site to provide this type of targeting and Gourmet Ads has a few sites where this is possible. We’re working on contextually being able to target against videos with pre roll video advertising. The challenge has always been one around how much inventory is there.

Rolling in 2012, we predict that companies will use Contextual Advertising for part of their media plan, it might be in two ways. 1. They will allocate 10-20% of the media plan’s budget to contextual to ensure the plan remains relevant, then use retargeting and then general run of food. 2. They will book a 6 or 12 month media plan to “own” the term. I.e. they will own “salmon recipes” in very much like a sponsorship type investment, changing the ad creative when required.

What do you think about my Advertising Trends 2012 Predictions ?

If you’re curious to see what I wrote in previous years they can be seen here ;
Advertising Trends 2011, Advertising Trends 2010, Advertising Trends 2009

Advertising Trends 2012 is a blog post from Gourmet Ads Food Advertising network, providing Display Advertising , Video Advertising and Supermarket Advertising solutions to reach the Grocery Buyer online.

Gourmet Ads Marketplace Continues to Grow

Since launching the Gourmet Ads Marketplace back in early November we’ve had a positive response from existing clients and as well as new clients choosing to buy media in our private ad exchange. We now have 7 companies buying each day on our private ad exchange and it continues to grow each week.

From a client perspective, one of the biggest advantages for advertisers and their agencies is the ability to use their own 1st party data when buying in the exchange. In other words advertisers can buy the impressions they want (using their own data) opposed to buying impressions they don’t want. An example of this is best illustrated with ecommerce sites that want to target a particular consumer which may have added items to their shopping cart, but left without making a purchase.

More Buyers and More Quality Inventory in the Gourmet Ads Marketplace

From our perspective, the greatest advantage of the Gourmet Ads Marketplace has been the ability to grow our inventory. As such we’ve a solid recruitment program in place currently to achieve our desired growth trajectory for our audience of grocery buyers.

Finally as 2012 rolls around, we’ll be opening up the Gourmet Ads Marketplace in Australia, Canada and the UK. So if you are interested in becoming a buyer on our private ad exchange, the Gourmet Ads Marketplace in any of these markets, then please Contact Us for information and CPM pricing.

Gourmet Ads Marketplace Update is a blog post from Gourmet Ads Food Advertising network, providing Display Advertising , Video Advertising and Supermarket Advertising solutions to reach the Grocery Buyer online.

Gourmet Ads Marketplace our Private Ad Exchange

Marketers, Advertising Agencies and Demand Side Platforms (DSPs) can access Gourmet Ads inventory using RTB (real time bidding) technology platforms.

Our Private Ad Exchange, called the Gourmet Ads Marketplace allows advertisers to reach our audience of household grocery buyers in a real-time bidding environment. Advertisers can run campaigns at scale, quickly and cost effectively.

The Gourmet Ads Marketplace will be an ideal fit for large advertisers looking to build awareness and reach an engaged foodie audience on sites featuring content like recipes. In addition to buying directly from the marketplace, advertisers will also be able to layer in data from DSP’s enabling more precise targeting and less wasted impressions.

Benefits for Private Ad Exchange Buyers;

• “First Look” at Ad Impressions
• Inventory Includes Above the Fold Impressions
• Pre-negotiated CPM pricing arrangements
• Efficiency gains through programmatic buying
• Ad Sizes include 300×600, 300×250, 160×600, 728×90
• Digital Media Buying at Scale
• Use either your own 1^st party data or 3^rd party data to improve audience targeting
• Lock in a fixed CPM rate for impressions

Gourmet Ads Marketplace ( Private ad Exchange ) is only available in the USA, UK, Australia and Canadian markets.

Private Ad Exchange is a blog post from Gourmet Ads Food Advertising network, providing Display Advertising , Video Advertising and Supermarket Advertising solutions to reach the Grocery Buyer online.

We’re Exploring new RecipeBridge Opportunities

It’s now been a few weeks since Gourmet Ads acquired the Recipe Search Engine, see ‘Gourmet Ads Acquires RecipeBridge‘, and now the RecipeBridge opportunities are expanding. Since the acquisition, our development and design teams have been making a number of robust changes to the site, with dozens more to follow over the coming weeks. We’ve got a new logo (see above) and a brand new interface coming very soon.

So now the development schedule is locked in and underway, we’re interested in exploring opportunities with both food and wine brands around the world. Apart from just simply adding your brands and recipes to RecipeBridge (Submit your Recipe Website) for our audience to discover, we are keen to start having discussions about partnerships.

Ideas about partnerships might include;

• Content & Integration type Partnerships
• Co-branded Microsites & Landing Pages
• Dedicated Pages for Food Brands
• Grocery Coupons and Widgets
• Dynamic Advertising Solutions
• Powering Mobile Applications and Web Apps
• Integrated Widgets

Finally, apart from the website, we are redeveloping the RecipeBridge Recipes API (Webservice) which we can use to power most of the offsite use of our recipe search data. So if you’re building a web application or mobile app, this is the easiest way to integrate our search results.

Contact Us for more RecipeBridge opportunities

So let’s start a conversation, Contact Us with your ideas and we’ll setup a time to chat and explore Recipebridge opportunities with you and your brand.

RecipeBridge Opportunities is a blog post from Gourmet Ads Food Advertising network, providing Display Advertising , Video Advertising and Supermarket Advertising solutions to reach the Grocery Buyer online.

test is a blog post from Gourmet Ads Food Advertising network, providing Display Advertising , Video Advertising and Supermarket Advertising solutions to reach the Grocery Buyer online.

You’re a Video Player Guru. You know everything about that there is to know about Video Players online and you’ve implemented dozens of solutions over the years.

You’ll be;

• Highly Experienced in VAST 2.0 and VPAID Ad Tags, and
• Have a complete understanding of Video Player Ecosystem  ( Flash & HTML5 )

You’ll become the Gourmet Ads “go to developer” who will either consult with site owners or undertake work on publisher sites as required. If our publishers currently have a video player solution in place you need to be able to recommend a solution for running VAST 2.0 and then if required implement a cost effective solution.

Some of our publishers use these video players including JW Player, Brightcove, LongTail Video Player, FreeWheel, Ooyala or Kaltura to name a few. Key to the role will be implementing a set of “standards” across our publishers.

We see this as an ongoing casual role with a rapidly growing business.

Outline

Gourmet Ads is the global leader in online food advertising solutions, managing display advertising on hundreds of food and recipe sites around the world. Our clients include major food brands, grocery stores, retailers and kitchenware companies helping them reach their target consumers online. The company is headquartered in Sydney, Australia with major operations in the USA, Canada and UK

Simply click on the button below to send us your Resume and/or link to your Linkedin Profile as well as a few recent video projects you’ve been involved with.

Video Player Developer – Casual is a blog post from Gourmet Ads Food Advertising network, providing Display Advertising , Video Advertising and Supermarket Advertising solutions to reach the Grocery Buyer online.

Outline

Gourmet Ads is the global leader in online food advertising solutions, managing display advertising on hundreds of food and recipe sites around the world. Our clients include major food brands, grocery stores, retailers and kitchenware companies helping them reach their target consumers online. RecipeBridge and Tastydays are two of the companies owned and operated website properties. The company is headquartered in Sydney, Australia with major operations in the USA, Canada and UK.

Position Summary

Based in North America you enjoy working independently, have a genuine passion for food and have a natural ability to build trusting business relationships. You thrive on being focused at the task at hand and prefer to “simply get on with the job” – Nine to fivers need not apply.​

In this multifaceted and integral role, you will be responsible for content on both  RecipeBridge and Tastydays websites. From creating new food content, to engaging our audience on social networking sites to establishing relationships with content providers or managing new traffic generation strategies you’ll be responsible for the entire site from start to finish.

Reporting directly to the Managing Director via email and Skype, you’ll also assist with executing advertising programs with our clients and advertising agencies around the globe.

General Tasks

• Increase our social networking footprint by engaging with our audience
• Implement traffic generation strategies
• Undertake and manage Email Marketing Programs
• Liaise with Gourmet Ads Publisher Co-ordinator to maximize opportunities
• Researching, identifying and contacting potential food content providers

RecipeBridge Specific Tasks

• Execute our recipe growth strategy
• Manage recipe site integration schedule with development team
• Develop and implement a daily blog schedule with our copywriter
• Create and manage Brand Pages for Clients

Tastydays Specific Tasks

• Implement the video growth strategy
• Continue building recipe, ingredient, drinks, food blog and chef content pages

Use your;

• Understanding of the online content, blogging, marketing and social networking
• Advanced knowledge of WordPress and content scheduling
• Excellent written and communications skills
• Strong organizational skills and ability to prioritize tasks
• Ability to work in a fast-paced, constantly evolving environment
• Previous web development an advantage but not essential

Simply click on the button below to send us your Resume and/or link to your Linkedin Profile

Content Coordinator (USA) is a blog post from Gourmet Ads Food Advertising network, providing Display Advertising , Video Advertising and Supermarket Advertising solutions to reach the Grocery Buyer online.