Cinco de Mayo Advertising
May 1, 2010 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
Cinco de Mayo is a Mexican holiday celebrated on the 5th of May each year, and Cinco de Mayo is Spanish for “fifth of May”. The holiday celebrates the victory of the Mexican militia over the French army at the Battle of Puebla in 1862.
Within Mexico itself Cinco de Mayo is only celebrated regionally, however in the United States, Cinco de Mayo is heavily promoted by grocery companies, bars and restaurants where the it has become a celebration of Mexican culture. In American border states such California and Arizona, Cinco de Mayo is significant holiday, with most grocery stores, bars and restaurants offering special deals to entice and generate sales.
For green grocers and grocery chains, Cinco de Mayo sees increased sales of food items especially beef, limes, tomatoes, cilantro and avocados the cornerstone of Mexican Cuisine. For Liquor stores, tequila and Mexican beers such as Corona and on the shopping list.
If you’re interested in running a Cinco de Mayo Advertising campaign, then Contact Us for more information or download the Gourmet Ads Media Kit.
Super Bowl Advertising 2010
February 10, 2010 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
After every Super Bowl, it seems everyone evaluates, critiques and comments on the advertising played within the big game. Why? Because companies spend a fortune to be there. Apart from production costs, the networks charged a reportedly USD$3 million for 30 secs.
Obviously being in advertising myself, I went through all the super bowl commercials on the specially created Youtube Super Bowl page. Everyone’s got one video they like and I’m no different, here’s “Voice Box” with T-Pain for Bud Light which was the only one that made me ROFL.
Super Bowl Advertising
October 27, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · 1 Comment
When you think of Super Bowl Advertising, you’ll probably immediately think of the advertising during the game, you know the ones that cost millions of dollars per 30 seconds. But the kind of super bowl advertising we’re talking about is the advertising to driver consumers to buy your food and beverage products prior the end of season game.
Each January the Super Bowl draws an enormous audience of viewers from right around the country, most at super bowl parties. So in order trigger Super Bowl party planning ideas with consumers undertaking a targeted Super Bowl Advertising campaign can provide great results. Because the Gourmet Ads network features an audience of grocery buyers and household decision makers it’s essential to ensure that we are part of your Super Bowl Advertising media mix.
So what companies can benefit from Super Bowl Advertising online? Well any companies that are associated with their products being served at Super Bowl Parties. With mostly a range finger food styled dishes being served at Super Bowl parties any ingredient or pre-made products which make dips, guacamole, chili, bbq ribs, nachos, spicy hot wings, sliders, hamburgers, hot dogs and quesadillas. Don’t forget chips, crisps, pop corn, crackers, cheese as well as beverages such as sodas, wines and beer which traditionally buy the million dollar TV advertising.
With the super bowl being played on the first Sunday in February, ideally your Super Bowl Advertising should commence in the last week of January which means you’ll have a two week campaign flight to drive consumer intent and engagement. Campaign ideas include using regular display advertising, expandable creative, interstitials, video and rich media. Campaign ideas which perform well include competitions and the ability to download Super Bowl coupons for product purchases.
It’s never too early to book your Super Bowl Advertising as this period tends to book up quickly as you can imagine. To book your two week Super Bowl Advertising campaign with Gourmet Ads, download our media kit or contact us with your campaign requirements.
Advertising your Twitter Page
May 22, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
Twitter is starting to gain a great deal of attention in main stream media in recent times and it reminds me of when Facebook initially started to gain a wider audience base about 2 years ago. At that time it was the early adopters in your network of friends that started to tip their toe in, with many still skeptical of the platform or concerned about privacy. I am seeing that same network of friends
starting to move to Twitter.
I think one of the reasons why we’ve seen a recent growth in Twitter is the use by both celebrities and companies who have already embraced the platform and having an actual two way discussion with fans or uses of their products. Something that till now has been hard for brands to do. Over at my personal site, I’ve created a list of Celebrity Chefs on Twitter.
So how does your brand engage with consumers on Twitter and gain an audience of a few hundred thousand followers overnight?
Gourmet Ads has been on Twitter for a while now (follow us @gourmetads), and we use the platform to talk with advertising agencies, marketing managers, publishers and anyone associated with our business around the globe. We publish regular content into Twitter each day as well as have conversations with clients and publishers regularly. So we have something that our audience actually wants to engage and actively discuss or even just read and observe.
Apart from people simply adding us via Twitter, we’ve grown our audience base through running targeted ads through the Gourmet Ads network. This is something that you can do its very cost effective compared to the some of the wild over thought strategies that you read or hear about. There is no point randomly adding people who are not relevant to your brand. If you are food brand and your product is only in New York State, Gourmet Ads can run a campaign that is targeted towards people that live in New York State who are more likely to engage with your brand than not. If you are winery in Napa Valley with national distribution, then it makes sense to just run your campaign in America.
Your campaign to drive people to your food or wine Twitter page could be done two ways. You could either drive them simply to your page on Twitter. However I believe that’s a very immature way of doing it because you assume that everyone who clicks on the ad will know;
a) what twitter is
b) what they have to do.
I would recommend sending the users to a page on your website and educate them about Twitter. This page could be about why your brand has decided to embrace Twitter and why they can benefit from following your brand online. I saw a boutique beer brand in Australia run a weekly competition only open to people following their brand on Twitter. Very clever.
If you’d like to look at increasing your reach using Twitter, then Gourmet Ads can help build your audience. Request a Proposal from us and we’ll develop a Digital Media Plan that targets your audience and helps drive engagement and conversation with your consumers.
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.
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.
Our Most Popular Blogs
February 22, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
Instead of writing my normal style of blogs, I thought today that it might be interesting to republish the links to the most popular blogs on the Gourmet Ads website. So from when we started the blog till now these are the most popular blogs and its interesting to note that there inst any real trend between them. Some have had thousands of views and I hope that we at Gourmet Ads are helping you navigate your brand online.
So here are the 10 Most Popular Blogs so far this year;
- Advertising Trends for 2009
- Wine Advertising Ideas
- Geo Targeting Advertising
- Advertising on Foods Blogs
- Your Advertising Budget for 2009
- Advertising Groceries Online
- Wine Tourism Advertising
- Advertising Next to Wine Reviews
- Vertical Advertising Increases ROI
- Christmas Advertising
If there is a topic which you’d like my thoughts or opinion on, feel free to us the Contact Us form.
Competing with Major Brands Online
January 14, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
It can be easy for a smaller company to assume that they will never be able to truly compete with the big brand names online. There is no doubt that the big companies are going to be able to outspend on display advertising on popular websites, but is this type of spending something that small companies should envy? Would it create results for them even if they could afford it? The likely answer is no. The best strategy for a smaller company is to target a particular niche and then focus your advertising campaign on them.
Take for example a small boutique brewery. It doesn’t make sense to try to compete with a mjaor brand like Budweiser or Heineken by placing ads on sites that have nothing to do with beer. This tactic works for the big boys because they have the budget to throw their nets out wide and see what they can pull in. But for the small brewer a more narrow focus is much more cost effective. Placing ads on sites where a beer connoisseur is likely to see them makes a lot more sense.
The focus should be as specific as possible. For instance, you would place an ad for a low carb or light beer on a food and wine website and possibly even next to online recipes for lighter, healthier meals so that the people most likely to buy a low carb or light beer will see your ad. For a new lager or stout you would want your ads to be focused on sites for beer enthusiasts on beer websites and blogs. By placing your beer advertising in front of a highly targeted market you are going to get the biggest bang for your advertising buck. After all, your goal isn’t to compete with the big companies; it is to get as many consumers as possible interested in your product to generate brand awareness.
If you’re a smaller business and want to reach a niche market that will offer long term growth, contact us for a digital media plan.
No Budget! Just ROI
December 16, 2008 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
Recently a prospective client said they had no budget for online advertising. I immediately thought he was trying to be misleading as this company’s advertisements appear on a number of sites on the internet. So I said to this to the company’s marketing manager that I’d seen there ads on sites on the internet and they said, we have no budget, just ROI. At the time their strategy wasn’t clear to me, but after learning and seeing it action, I now understand it backwards. Since that first conversation, I’ve heard this a number of times after talking with prospective clients and thought its worth sharing with you.
Most professionally run online stores know their conversion rates when a particular audience visits their store, ie a 5% conversion rate means that for every 100 people that visit the site, 5 actually make a purchase. Apart from conversion rates, most ecommerce managers know how many times consumers visit the online store before they purchase, how many pages they’ll look at, where they are located and how much they usually spend. Most of this intelligence can be sourced from various web analytic tools like Google Analytics or Web Trends as well as custom reports and metrics.
So after they know the kind of customer that spends, the challenge is how to find these consumers online, and then drive them to the store. Savvy advertisers will generally run a short trial campaign for say 2 – 4 weeks with a budget of say $5000 to see what kind of audience an advertiser like Gourmet Ads delivers and if they are actually buyers. Some channels drive traffic, but they don’t buy.
Once these savvy advertisers know the conversion rate, they can work out the return on investment (ROI) on the advertising costs. Once they’ve got a return on investment in mind, they’ll book ongoing advertising over multiple months, monitoring the return on investment and not the budget. As long as the sales continue these savvy advertisers purely monitor the sales and renew the advertising. The key here isn’t to get complacent; it’s essential to continually change the advertising message, branding and look and feel of the advertising as well as the deal to ensure that audiences continue to be engaged with the advertising.
Because the quality of the click in vertical advertising networks is much more qualified than horizontal networks, we can continue to drive the same levels of return on investment for advertisers over time. See a recent post titled Vertical Advertising Increases ROI.
If you’d like to learn more about the Gourmet Ads vertical advertising network, request a media kit.
