Advertising to Teens is more challenging than other Demographic

Advertising to teens is a challenge as they are a more volatile and slightly more unpredictable group of consumers. However, they are the richest age demographic in terms of having the highest rate of disposable income. Impulse buys, trends and fast-changing fads often have an impact on the way that teens make purchases – and advertisers need to be aware of this and be willing to adjust their ad campaigns accordingly.

For a lot of teenagers (especially girls) these are the ages where they begin baking and experimenting with cooking. There are so many advertising strategies that have proven successful techniques in grabbing teenagers’ attentions, and authentic branding is crucial here. Let your demographic know who you are and stay to your brand and its values.

Creating a human connection is important, and if the target audience feel like they are being treated with importance, they will inevitably develop a sense of loyalty to your brand and feel like you are a trustworthy and credible company.

When Advertising to Teens – Make it Relevant !

Acting as if you are ‘down with the kids’ won’t do anything for your credibility. However, if you research the teen market thoroughly you will be able to appreciate that teens are very social media savvy. Teens have plenty of accessibility to handheld digital devices and social media sites on the go and so are practically always reachable. Social networking advertising is a great way to connect more personally with your audience.

The Gourmet Ads network has a great range of sites and a robust social media presence. Its these sort of sites that are frequented by teenage girls as they seek out recipes and cooking ideas. Gourmet Ads also appreciate the importance of social media presence on the web in order to reach out to newer audiences – right then and there. Teens are a tech savvy market and using excitement, celebrities, the idea that they might be missing out or the “cool” factor can truly reach out to a younger demographic. Keep it fun and light and you will expand your target demographic into advertising to teens group as well!

Advertising to Teens 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.

Increase in Online Manufacturer Coupons

Over the last few years there has been a tremendous growth in online coupons. Many small and large appliance brands issue Manufacturer Coupons which invariably increase brand loyalty. When a brand offers a special deal to customers – even something very basic – consumers find it hard to resist a special offer or discount coupon!

Manufacturer coupons find their way into shopping lists as customers usually write down the coupon to ensure the coupon gets used before its expiry date. Therefore, advertising manufacturer coupons online has proven to be very lucrative for a brand. The average person spends approx 13 hours per week online and about 9 hours per day using some form of digital media. This means that coupons can be sent to consumers easily, and with the ease of shopping online at big box retailers or other ecommerce stores, coupons are much easier to redeem.

Gourmet Ads can help create strong brand identities with Manufacturer Coupons

Advertising manufacturer coupons on the Gourmet Ads network can help in creating strong brand identities and reaching the right audiences. With more exposure comes more awareness of your brand which makes consumers trust your brand and products more, therefore making it more likely for them to make a purchase.

Gourmet Ads can geotarget manufacturer coupon advertising campaigns in respective geographies to yield more results for the advertising campaigns and create an even stronger branding for your products. Rather than targeting advertising at just one geographic location, Gourmet Ads can help you analyse sales in order to make the most of your advertising campaign. This way you are only advertising to relevant audiences and therefore increasing their chances of them making a purchase.

Although collecting and using coupons used to be targeted just towards older generations, they are now just as popular with younger people. This is worth remembering when creating an effective ad campaign. Think about the demographic groups that you want to target such as students who will be eager to save money – manufacturer coupons can be a dream for college students!

Advertising Manufacturer Coupons 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 Styling creates a visual appeal for the consumers in advertising

Food is a sensuous product and needs to appeal to all five of the senses in order to make it extra desirable. Food styling and food photography provides visual presentation is therefore equally as important as taste and smell when it comes to good quality food. With a variety of textures, flavors, fragrances and colors, any product can be more appealing to a consumer.

Food stylists can help create stunning food pictures by arranging them in a visually appealing way for a target audience. These expert food arrangers are professionally trained in order to be able to place the food in such a way that it gives the audience an idea about how the food would feel, smell and taste – even if they are looking at a 2D image of the dish!

Customers aren’t stupid – they know that the images of food that they see on billboards, on menus, in magazines or on online ads aren’t as they appear in store. However, many customers still want to know whether they are being cheated out of a super-appetizing meal.

A curious McDonalds customer asked Hope Bagozzi, Director of Marketing for McDonalds, Canada: “Why does your food look different in the advertising than what is in the store?”. The reason behind this was of course that the food took a lot of long preparation to get it looking as colorful and perfect as possible using a food stylist, photographer and image editor.

The reason for this was not to deceive the customer, but was instead to help them get a visual idea of the ingredients going into each burger – i.e. most ingredients were placed to the forefront of the image so that the photo could pick up all ingredients. To see more have a look at “Behind The Scenes at a McDonalds Photo Shoot”.

Food styling makes Food Photography for Advertising Campaigns Taste Great

It is clear that it is not just food arrangement and photography that is needed to make food adverts look great, it is also a few editorial changes that need to be done to make the food look mouth watering to a potential customer.

Styling techniques such as spraying food with oils or steam during them photo shoot to make it look fresh, or using a tool to melt the cheese on a burger (as seen in “Behind The Scenes at a McDonalds Photo Shoot”) is all part of the plan to make customers not just see the food but make them desperately want it.

By releasing a YouTube video like the above not only addresses a customer’s questions but also makes customers warm to the brand due to their honesty about food presentation. Make it clear you are not lying to your customers by using this type of presentation of food – food styling simply makes it much more pretty to look at!

Food Styling for Advertising 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.

Benefits of using a Vertical Ad Network like Gourmet Ads

Some advertisers only purchases advertising with websites directly and haven’t worked with ad network like Gourmet Ads before. Using a Vertical Ad Network like Gourmet Ads to purchase media for online advertising campaigns does deliver many benefits for advertisers.

So we thought we’d highlight some of the specific benefits of working with an Ad Network opposed to working with on a site specific basis.

• Efficiently Priced Inventory
• Beyond the Banner Placements
• Low Duplication Rates
• Audience & Reach
• Website Transparency
• Combination of Display & Content Integration
• Quality of Content
• Top Level Domains Only
• Reporting 24/7 via Control Panel
• Value Additions

Is there an Ad Network on your Media Plan to reach Grocery Buyers ?

If you’re a food or supermarket brand there isn’t a better placed network to reach your target audience, then Gourmet Ads. We maintain an extensive network of quality food and recipe websites (including Owned and Operated sites) where brands can execute a range of advertising solutions.

We’d very much like to have a conversation about what we can deliver endemic and non endemic advertisers.So next time you’re developing a Media Plan, make sure you RFP Gourmet Ads and we’ll show you just what Gourmet Ads can do.

Download the Gourmet Ads Media Kit and why not try the Gourmet Ads, Ad Network on your next Media Plan.

Ad Network on the Media Plan 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.

A quality Recipe, Cooking or Food Site is a combination of many factors

Here at Gourmet Ads we’re regularly asked “what is a quality food site?”. It’s not a simple answer, but we’ll try to illustrate here what we believe a quality food site is.

Since we started, we’ve seen a raft of food sites come through our publisher application process. Some food sites are fantastic and others are to be honest, complete garbage.

Gourmet Ads has always had strict eligibility criteria when it comes to approving food and recipe websites as publishers. We also recently released an internal website scoring process to help us identify great food website from the lousy ones.

To begin with first and foremost and at a very top level, quality food sites have to have original content, with new and refreshing content added regularly. We like to see user engagement on the site like commenting, voting or of course Likes around content.

What goes into classifying a quality food site ?

From an advertisers perspective, these are the features we consider as a minimum for a site to be called a quality food site in our mind and thus included in Gourmet Ads ;

• Compelling content that is updated regularly – daily or twice weekly at a minimum
• A top level domain name (relevant company name that ends in “.com” or similar country level domain like .com.au)
• Well-designed site and not a simple template
• A maximum of 3 ads per webpage
• 2 Ads placed above the fold
• Well indexed by search engines
• High Google page ranking
• Interact and engage with your audience

Each day we’re seeking out quality food sites to be part of Gourmet Ads. It’s the company’s mission to incorporate quality food sites within our network, so the ad campaigns reach out to the right audience.

What Is A Quality Food Site? 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.

Call to action seals the deal with customers

A “call to action” style of marketing is where the advertiser urges the consumer to immediately make a purchase or take action. It is simply a way of asking for a sale! Without a call to action, many advertisers and brands miss out on sealing the deal with their customers.

A call to action cannot stand on its own. You need to give your consumer some information about your company, what your brand stands for, what you can offer, and what makes you better than your competitors. You need to show and explain to your potential customer how you are more valuable and why they should come to you.

Call to action is all about motivating your customer into coming to you to make a purchase. It is therefore important in order to convert the “action” to make sales. It is about giving the opportunity to your potential customer to make a purchase even if they hadn’t considered it. The more opportunities you give and the easier you make it for customer to go through and buy your product, the more likely it is you will convert your call to action into a sale.

When advertising online, the placement, shape, and size of your ‘call to action’ buttons are vital in grabbing the user’s attention and making it easy for them to make that action, whether it is signing up to a blog or clicking through to your product page.

Buttons that say “Try for Free”, “Join Now” or “Get Started” aren’t complicated and can easily grab a user’s attention. Large buttons are also easier to spot, even more so if they are placed in the upper half of your webpage. If a user has to scroll or search hard to find a “joining” button, they will quickly lose interest. Make call to actions easy for your consumers to find and you will increase the chances of making a sale.

Incorporate Call to Action button in your ad campaigns

Incorporating a ‘Call to Action’ button within your ad campaigns can have many benefits. Instead of letting your consumers know about your product and allow them to come to you, you can force them into action by adding a call to action button to your blog, advert or webpage. This means that you can encourage them to easily purchase your product and you are making the task much simpler for them.

Making the buttons a contrasting colour to the rest of your ad also stands out from the rest of the page. Ensure that you’re not over cluttering your page either – you want the button to stand on its own and entice users to click on it and therefore hopefully make a purchase. An effective ‘call to action’ button will let the user know exactly what they are getting when they click, and also force them into clicking it quickly and with urgency.

Clear Call To Action 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.

300×600 Ad Size or the ‘Half Page Ad’

The 300×600 or the “half page ad” format is now an IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) standard format.

At Gourmet Ads, we have nearly half of the sites we work with accept the 300×600 / half page ad unit on their sites. Why? Well, according to a recent study by AOL and the IPG Media Lab, the 300×600 ad unit is a better choice for display advertising as it can catch a web user’s eye twice the speed of a 300×250 ad, and the web user is also more likely to stay with the ad for can catch a web user’s eye twice the speed of a 300×250 ad, and the web user is also more likely to stay with the ad for up to 4 times longer.

The 300×600 ad units have many benefits including:

• They are approved IAB Standard Ad Units
• Can be used in a variety of rich media
• Outstanding click through rate levels
• Higher interaction rates
• Placing a video advertisement is easier
• Increase intention to make a purchase
• As they are in large, attention grabbing formats, they have great visibility

Due to their obvious advantages and popularity, 300×600 ads are in high demand from advertisers. The main reason for this is that advertisers nowadays are reaching out to internet users that have been surfing the net for many years and have become accustomed to seeing banners, pop ups and a whole array of ads flashing before their eyes.

The 300×600 Ad Size has greater visibility

Web users have learnt to ignore these ads which marketers call ‘Banner Blindness’. So, in order to break through this, the 300×600 has taken precedent over most other formats for attention grabbing ability!

Gourmet Ads can take your existing creative assets and develop 300×600 ad units for your campaign using your brand standards quickly and cost effectively. Rather than spending large amounts of your advertising budget on ineffective ads, Gourmet Ads can help you craft an effective and great value for money half page ad which will attract consumer attention.

Not only will an ad unit of this size appeal to your customer and keep their attention for longer, further studies have also shown that more positive feelings are felt towards these larger ad sizes and they have been proven to lessen negative feelings towards ads online. On top of this, 300×600 ad sizes also increase the consumer’s intention to make a purchase which is an ideal way of boosting sales and revenue!

300×600 Ad Size Growing In Popularity 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.

Introducing Website Scoring of Food Publishers

Gourmet Ads has always had strict eligibility criteria when it comes to approving food and recipe websites as publishers. Publishers have never been able to simply signup and start serving ads like some other questionable networks. We have always had an approval process with every site being vetted by our Publishing team before being accepted. In addition, our publisher criteria are ever changing, an example of this is, earlier this year we implemented a Top Level Domain only policy. This particular changed provided great feedback from Advertisers and I think is one of the many reasons why agencies and brands continue to trust Gourmet Ads with their ad campaigns.

So this week we’ve introduced some “Special Sauce” to the publisher approval process. Many agencies and buyers rely on Comscore to assess a website and its audience. I have personally never felt that this should be the sole way to assess a site, especially for Tier 2 level sites, which typically are not on Comscore’s radar. Others use Alexa which I’ve always believed is complete rubbish.

With this in mind, Gourmet Ads have invested in our own technology for scoring a website as part of the publisher application process. Like Google’s PageRank we look a number of metrics available to us, and using a customized algorithm we score a site accordingly. Introducing Website Scoring is only the first part. With nearly 5 years of experience in running campaigns on food and recipe sites we know what works for advertiser and what doesn’t. The aim is to eliminate sites that just don’t or won’t make sense for use to include in Gourmet Ads long term.

Our Website Scoring Algorithm includes data from;

• Audience Data
• Social Indicators
• Search Indicators
• Contenting and Publishing History
• Contextual Relevance
• Spam Rating

Website Scoring is in its early days, but as begin to expand our publisher base of sites, it’s this sort of commitment we go to ensure our advertisers are not only getting the required results for their campaigns, but are on great food and recipe websites to begin with.

Website Scoring 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.

Reach Grocery Buyers with your Pasta Advertising

Nothing says traditional Italy than a good bowl of delicious pasta, and it has been around since 1^st century AD. Pasta has evolved tremendously in recent years and with so many varieties available, it is no wonder this staple food is popular in practically every country across the world.

With many years to evolve and so many varieties out there (there are more than 350 types of dried pasta alone), there has been a sudden increase in some newer pasta varieties:

• handcrafted
• whole grain
• whole wheat
• gluten free
• brown rice

With new handcrafted (fresh) pasta types appearing on the market, Gourmet Ads is here to help handcrafted pasta brands stand out. Not only is fresh pasta easier to cook – it tastes great too!

Rather than spending a large budget on traditional advertising methods such as radio, TV or print, Gourmet Ads can create a successful pasta advertising campaign for pasta companies to reach target audiences online. One such pasta advertising campaign idea is contextually targeting your advertising to anyone searching for pasta on RecipeBridge.com. We’ve run very successful campaigns targeting all types of pasta shapes, sauces and pasta dishes. Advertising pasta is likely to be successful with all generations too – pasta is an essential grain needed in all diets and now with a more health conscious population doing their grocery shopping, they need to be aware that pasta is as important in their diets as protein and vegetables are.

Pasta Advertising is not just about Dried Packet Pasta

Pasta is a basic, staple food but it can also be delicious and healthy when mixed with other ingredients. It is also a great energy source which can be very appealing to the budding athletes out there. Pasta advertising is about reaching out to consumers who love their food, like to be aware of healthy dinner options and who enjoy new products.

Pasta Advertising can be for anything pasta related, so why not consider running advertising for;

• Dried Packet Pasta
• Fresh Packet Pasta
• Pasta Sauces
• Pasta Cheese
• Pasta Makers
• Pasta Flour

Pasta needs to be exciting! Consumers tend to take this great food for granted, so by using Gourmet Ads network of sites to reach out to a larger number of consumers, you are not only boosting your brand awareness and making your brand seem more trustworthy because of this; you are also making pasta fashionable and more appealing to the younger generations if your advertising creates a ‘buzz’.

To get started with your next Pasta Advertising Campaign, Download our Media Kit, or Request a Proposal from our team.

Pasta Advertising 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.

Reach Grocery Buyers with your Yoogurt Advertising Online

From traditional yogurts to gourmet styles, the yogurt industry is booming within the food industry and with many people now becoming more a more conscious about their weight and having a healthy body, this industry is also appealing to the health conscious too.

Due to the product popularity, the market for this is getting more and more competitive as there are many varieties available, from traditional to Greek to organic to baby yogurts and so on. With the healthy food lovers out there desperately seeking out ways to improve their digestive health, the popularity of ‘good bacteria’ yogurts is also on the up rise.

Parents and children are largely the targeted audience for the yogurt market, and most of Gourmet Ads audience fits into this demographic too. Advertising therefore needs to cater to the younger generation as well as parents. For school packed lunches, yogurts are a healthy snacking option as they are a great source of calcium, protein and vitamins, and for older people it is full of anti oxidants that help protect against illness.

Due to the yogurt market being such a competitive one at the moment, Gourmet Ads can help newly established or smaller gourmet companies stand out more by creating brand awareness, and improving consumer outreach. With larger, big budget yogurt companies dominating the TV waves, smaller companies can focus their advertising on online advertising with Gourmet Ads.

Gourmet Ads makes yogurt advertising for dairy brands easy

Gourmet Ads network of sites makes yogurt advertising for dairy brands easy. We reach a larger number of household grocery buyers. By advertising across the Gourmet Ads network, you are connecting with people that are interested in food and recipes as well as making household buying decisions. These loyal visitors to Gourmet Ads are generally more likely to pay attention to relevant ads if you are trying to generate brand awareness.

Consumers are also beginning to realise the health benefits of Greek yogurt for example and sales of this variety have soared over the past couple of years. Not only does Greek yogurt have massive health benefits, it is also an amazingly versatile variety which can be used in a variety of recipes and in sweet and savoury dishes.

Whether you want to advertise the versatility of your products or just want to make food lover aware of your brand, Gourmet Ads is the ideal place to gather followers and improve brand loyalty from new, old and potential customers. Yogurt is trending and appealing to all generations, and appropriate yogurt advertising for this extremely competitive product is going to be much more successful with an online advertising campaign.

Yogurt Advertising 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.