Brand Safe Environment
March 5, 2010 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
Gourmet Ads works with well-known brands right around the world and one of the important things we strive to deliver each and every day is a brand safe environment for our advertisers and their ad agencies.
So what does a brand safe environment mean? A brand safe environment is one where advertisers can be rest assured that their advertising will run on approved premium websites. There has been unscrupulous ad networks in the past who’ve been trafficking premium brand advertising across brand-damaging objectionable content, causing major PR issues for all of those involved.
The Gourmet Ads Brand Safe Environment
We believe that technology sometimes has its flaws, so we prefer to use a manual process, coupled with technology to ensure our brand safe environment. As such Gourmet Ads ensures a brand safe environment for advertisers in three separate ways;
- Transparency to Advertisers
Prior to any advertising campaign going live, we provide advertisers a full list of sites that are part of Gourmet Ads. We do of course add sites all the time, but overall we do offer total transparency for our Brand Safe Environment. - Hand Selected Editorially Selected Recipes Sites
Websites can’t just join Gourmet Ads and start serving ads straight away. First off every site must meet our selection criteria (detailed here) and then they are manually reviewed. Each of URL is then screened by our publishing team for both theme and content. Because we know the food and recipe space, we know very quickly if we want them part of Gourmet Ads. Some ad networks have the reputation of taking any publisher that comes through the door, and unfortunately many do. We’re proud of our high rejection rate! - Tagging of Approved Sites
Apart from simply adding sites to Gourmet Ads – each site is tagged with keywords for additional trafficking. i.e sample tags include for “Above the Fold” and “Privacy Policy”. So if a advertiser only wanted to run with sites that have a Privacy Policy we can easily traffic this. - URL Restrictions
Apart from the manual process detailed above, our final check is via technology, ensuring that ads are only served on approved URLs and that our ad tags are not trafficked across other sites.
For more about the Gourmet Ads network, Download our Media Kit or Request a Proposal from our team.
Advertising Free Shipping
February 26, 2010 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
The other day I was reading an old article in the New York Times about how offering Free Shipping on your ecommerce site can significantly increase sales. The article discusses and shares insight into the strategies of the some of the most popular online stores and how they price their shipping and how it can greatly impact sales. Read the article here – Nothing Says ‘Buy’ Like ‘Free Shipping’ .
The Free Shipping Article had me thinking about how a company which was going to offer free shipping for a period of time and how they would promote the offer. Naturally I think most only stores undertaking a free shipping promotion would do two things. First they would put some sort of promotional messaging on their sites advising prospective customers that they might qualify for free shipping on their first order. Secondly, an ecommerce store offering free shipping would reach out to their existing customer with an EDM of sorts advising that for their next order the shipping is free. Another idea is advertising free shipping, but I’ll get back to that in a moment.
What I think most online stores forget is that free shipping could be a great lead generation strategy to build sales. A few years ago I was involved in an online store start up as a consultant. Well before the successful bricks and mortar company started building their new start up website, they undertook a market research study to identify customer ideals, which they assumed were very different from their existing bring and mortar customers.
The number one thing that came from the market research was that customers online were more likely to make a purchase on their new site if the shipping was free, opposed to paying a premium for the delivery. So the company went into the new ecommerce site with the marketing tactic that customers would never pay for shipping. They simply built the shipping into the price point. The result; sales exploded for them and they’ve never looked back. The site has turned out to be a multimillion dollar online business and I believe that it’s because of their foundation that customers will never pay for shipping.
Ok, so you’ve decided to run a free shipping promotion. So apart from reaching out to customers on your site or your existing customer base, you should consider running an advertising campaign to market your free shipping campaign. By advertising free shipping you’re removing one of the hurdles that many online stores face and reaching out to gaining new customers. It could be the best lead generation campaign you’ve ever run.
Apart from simply running your free shipping advertising across our entire network of grocery buyers, we can help develop your advertising creative. It’s important for the creative to indicate that you’re offering free shipping. Don’t put the key message in a small font, make it stand out in bold and gain attention.
For more information about running your free shipping advertising with Gourmet Ads, Download our Media Kit or Request a Proposal from our team.
March Advertising Packages
February 25, 2010 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
For advertising agencies and companies who’ve had incremental budgets become available for March, the last month of Q1, check out Gourmet Ads March advertising packages.
Our March advertising packages feature extremely competitive CPM rates and once again we’ve included high visibility ad units including Intersitial Advertising and Floating Ads which are ideal for any food company or CPG advertiser who wants to reach the main household grocery buyer. Priced this month at US$15k and US$35k all packages feature high profile placements together with regular display units. As always we’d be happy to further customize each of the packages depending on your campaign targets and desired reach.
Additionally we are happy to extend these campaigns for 30 days from the start date opposed to just 30 days. So if you book your campaign to start on the 12th of March, it will go through to the 12th April.
If you’d like to check out our March Advertising Packages, simply go to the Contact Us page and mention “March Advertising Packages” in the message field and we’ll email them together with our Media Kit. Providing you have advertising creative ready to go. The team at Gourmet Ads can turn around a campaign in less than 24 hours.
2011 Media Planning
February 23, 2010 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
Believe it or not a great deal of digital advertising agencies are already undertaking their 2011 Media Planning for their clients. The RFPs from agencies coming in right now are mostly for companies planning media from July 2010 through to June 2011 activity. This is very different from media planning which we experienced last year with most planning taking place either a couple of days from going live or at a maximum of 8 weeks in advance.
Interestingly most companies have increased their budgets for 2011 Media Planning by approximately 2 to 2 and half times from that in 2009/2010. Many of the companies we deal directly with in the food, wine, tourism and kitchen appliance industries are all looking at online as a cost effective channel to achieve growth in sales.
Already apparent across 2011 media planning that we’ve seen is the shift from the performance based metric of just click through rate (CTR) over to the broader brand based metric of engagement rate. The move to engagement rates suggests that a heavy emphasis will be placed on creative development in 2011, using high visibility units such as video. This is very different from the past where most campaigns booked consisted of only regular display units such as 728×90, 300×250 and 160×600. Its seems that agencies are planning to use creative such as pre roll video, widgets, long term integration, dynamic ads, expandable units, interstitials, background skins and social networking elements all which can be executed through Gourmet Ads.
For companies in the Food and Wine space, Gourmet Ads is a natural fit, but some of the media planning we’ve seen in 2011 is for companies outside of this space. Advertising agencies have recognised the value of our female grocery buying audience which has led to RFPs in the tourism, financial, automotive spaces indicating that many brand advertisers are seeking quality inventory out of their “safe” advertising places that they used in 2009 and Q1 2010.
Gourmet Ads can help you or your advertising agency develop your 12 month plan to target your audience online throughout the year. By booking media in advance (either 6 month or 12 months) allows us to offer significant discounts on CPM rates and bonus impressions increasing your return on investment.
To have Gourmet Ads help with your 2011 media planning, please Request for Proposal from us or to learn more about Gourmet Ads, download a copy of our media kit.
Driving a Social Audience
February 12, 2010 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
Most brands (particularly food and wine brands) these days have developed or are in the process of developing their social networking strategy. Some will opt for a Facebook Page others will use Twitter, while others will opt to develop their own platform. Irrespective of the platform, how are you driving a relevant audience to your social networking environment?
For some it might feel foreign to drive traffic to a social networking page which you don’t actually own, but these platforms allow you to engage deeper with your audience of consumers. These people are your brand ambassadors. Simply by them adding your brand to their profile is an endorsement of your product. Over 4 million people have added the Coke Cola page to their Facebook profile which is the largest of any brand.
So how can Gourmet Ads build your social networking audience? There are two stages we would recommend as part of the development of any social networking strategy.
- The first is running a wide reaching ad campaign with creative encouraging them to join or follow your page. If budget allows the creative could even draw in the current conversation on the social networking page allowing the audience to engage by default. This initial burst will quickly bump up the numbers which will help from a viral aspect. It gets the ball rolling.
- Prior to the initial burst of activity we would provide a beacon which would need to be installed on your site. This simple Javascript drops a cookies for people that visit your site. Then we would run a longer campaign aimed at only people that have visited your site. The conversation rate for this campaign will be much higher than the initial burst, but will of course be lower in terms of the people because the funnel is smaller.
The key to a successful social networking is the creative, and where possible including a dynamic type aspect will certainly help get the audience engaged with your conversation straight away.
If you’re interested in Gourmet Ads driving traffic to your social networking pages, then Download our Media Kit or Request a Proposal from our team.
February Advertising Packages
February 10, 2010 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
Gourmet Ads continues to grow our audience of household grocery buyers with over a dozen new sites being added to the network just last week. Add to this, during January we expanded our operations into the UK with a week long agency roadshow there. So there hasn’t been a better time to run an advertising campaign or test with us.
Our February packages are based on last months packages, because we had such a good response to them. They feature extremely competitive CPM rates and once again we’ve including high visibility ad units including Intersitial Advertising and Floating Ads which are ideal for any food company or CPG advertiser who wants to reach the main household grocery buyer. Priced this month at US$15k and US$35k all packages feature high profile placements together with regular display units. We’d be happy to further customize each of the packages depending on your campaign targets and desired reach. Apart from just running in February, we can offer these packages right throughout Q1 2010.
If you’d like to review our February packages, simply go to the Contact Us page and mention “February Advertising Packages” in the message field and we’ll email them together with our Media Kit. Providing you have advertising creative ready to go. The team at Gourmet Ads can turn around a campaign in less than 24 hours.
Post Impression Tracking
February 4, 2010 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
Most people think that a click (measured as the click through rate or CTR) is the only trackable metric when running a display advertising campaign. However comScore Brand Metrix data indicates that many website visitors respond to ads by going directly to the advertiser’s site — either through a brand search or by entering a web address — without clicking the ad itself. Either way the individual arrives on your site because they were influenced by seeing your ad campaign running, which is why it’s important to mention the website within your ad creative.
Unlike many other networks, all campaigns running on the Gourmet Ads network can track the overall ad effectiveness, via post impression tracking (also known as view-through tracking).
With post-impression tracking, advertisers can tie ad impressions to conversion events on the advertisers’ sites, up to 30 days after the original ad view.
Digging deeper, Post-impression tracking enables us to;
- Tie ad impressions to later purchases, searches, or sign ups on the advertiser’s site, for deeper insight into customer behavior and future campaign optimization
- Customize the tracking timeframe from just a few hours to up to 30 days
- Track up to four events per campaign and collect up to eight attributes (such as shopping cart value or SKUs purchased) for each conversion event
- Measure advertisers’ cost per conversion by campaign
- Easily manage implementation and reporting via the Adify console
Setting up post impression tracking is relatively easy. After you’ve booked the campaign and it’s been trafficked, we’ll provide javascript tags which you insert into the footer of your site. Our trafficking team will do some testing, then as soon as your campaign goes live your reports will be available.
So if you’re interested in measuring ad effectiveness for your next campaign, then be sure to request post impression tracking when booking your campaign with us. For more information, download our media kit or you can request a proposal and we’ll send through a full digital media plan for your consideration.
President’s Day Advertising
February 2, 2010 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
One of the first big retail shopping weekends of the year is President’s Day and most retailers offer significant savings off products. To achieve great high sales it’s essential that your President’s Day Advertising campaign includes a wide reaching digital aspect to drive consumers to both your online store or bricks and mortar stores.
For those that don’t know, Presidents Day was originally known as Washington’s Birthday in honor of the first US president, George Washington’s birthday on February 22, 1732. President’s Day is a federal holiday in the United States and is generally celebrated on the third Monday of February.
Ideally your President’s Day Advertising should launch about 2 weeks prior to Presidents Day weekend on or about the 7th or 8th of February and should be wide reaching initially. Then about the 10th or 11th of February you should start running higher visibility units such as floating ads or interstitial advertising to gain attention, then rely on regular display throughout the network.
President Day Weekend is a great weekend for discounts, so make sure that your offers are exceptional. Remember your competitors will be in the market too undertaking President’s Day Advertising of their own. So have a clear offering in order to stand out.
So no matter if your advertising campaign has a national focus or local focus, Gourmet Ads can deliver your Presidents Day Advertising to your target demographic. For more information, Download our Media Kit or contact us for a proposal.
Yearlong Campaign
January 27, 2010 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
I want to share a strategy which we developed for a client who advertised every other month on Gourmet Ads last year. This client wanted Gourmet Ads to develop ideas for a yearlong campaign in 2010 which would be booked in addition to the other booked branding campaigns throughout the year. Most important to her was that whatever we did it had to be targeted to reach possible consumers of her product.
What we developed was rather simple and just a few weeks into the campaign is already proving fruitful and driving sales and subscriptions. Although this client is in the food industry, the same strategy we developed could easily be applied to any industry.
So what was the all year campaign that we developed? Well it’s basically a retargeting campaign, which uses a variety of creative to drive people back to her site depending on pre determined trigger points. In fact we plan to change the creative every couple of weeks.
The client added JavaScript to their site late last year, which meant they starting dropping cookies in the lead up to Christmas when their site had increased traffic. Now any people that visited our client’s site and didn’t make a purchase or signup to their newsletter is targeted for the year long campaign. Effectively we’re bringing back people that have already visited their website, who in theory are more likely to convert than first time visitors.
To even refine the targeting further we’re also time day parting the campaign as purchasers are more likely to purchase on weekdays from 10am through to 10pm at night. So the ads will only be displayed during these times. Once again we’re drilling down the targeting for ROI purposes.
This is an ideal strategy for any sort of company whose goal is customer acquisition or online sales. We would of course suggest that you also run far reaching branding campaigns to drive additional traffic. These could be short run campaigns or around key dates in the year.
For more information, download our media kit or request a proposal from our team.
Cooking Ad Network
January 5, 2010 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
I was asked today by a kitchenware advertiser if Gourmet Ads was a cooking ad network. The reason the advertiser was asking, was if we were a cooking ad network was because they planned to run advertising nearby online recipes. The kitchenware media buyer added that placements located nearby online recipes was essential because this is where they had been seeing the best conversions. Our observations over the past 12 months are similar.
So after that question I thought I might highlight some of the sorts of sites in the Gourmet Ads network to illustrate that we are a cooking ad network and that we run next to online recipes.
Some of the sites that make up the Gourmet Ads network include;
- Recipe Websites
- User Generated Recipe Sites
- Cooking Video Sites
- Recipe Search Engines
- Cooking Forums
- Food Blogs
Apart from simply running beside recipes, the majority of the sites on the Gourmet Ads network can run beyond the banner campaigns including Floating Ads, Interstitial Ads and Over the Page to name just a few. These high profile, high impact creative advertising units provide unparamount engagement with targeted audiences.
So if you’re looking for a cooking ad network for your next campaign, then go no further. Start by downloading the Gourmet Ads Media Kit or Request a Proposal from our team. We’ll develop a bespoke media plan for your brand that’s not only cost effective but highly targeted to your audience.
