Benjamin Christie interviewed by Alan Kohler on Qantas Inflight Radio

This month, our Managing Director, Benjamin Christie is interviewed by Alan Kohler on Talking Business which is played on Qantas Inflight Radio. Alan Kohler is the founder of Business Spectator, a business news and financial commentary website. He is also the ABC’s finance reporter and founder of the online investing publication Eureka Report.

Those that fly Qantas will know of Talking Business, which has been their flagship business channel on their inflight radio system OnQ for many years. Talking Business regularly features Australian Business leaders and entrepreneurs talking about their business.

In Benjamin’s interview, he talks about his career as a chef, online media buying, real time buying, advertising trends as well as how he started the food advertising network, Gourmet Ads.

Listen to the Qantas Inflight Interview here

Talking Business on Qantas Inflight 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.

AD2ONE has been appointed by food advertising network, Gourmet Ads

Global digital group, AD2ONE has been appointed by the world’s leading online food advertising network, Gourmet Ads to provide exclusive advertising access to millions of mainly female Australian grocery buyers online via its vast collection of quality small and large food websites. With a strong presence in the US, Canada, the UK and more recently Australia, Gourmet Ads specialises in reaching the grocery buyer online by managing advertising next to recipes online.

Gourmet Ads will join AD2ONE’s highly successful lifestyle channel focusing on delivering branding campaigns, particularly in the food, grocery and FMCG sectors, to drive sales and customer acquisition.

The Gourmet Ads network comprises of hundreds of editorially selected cooking based sites and features recipe websites, video food sites, food blogs and recipe search engines. These sites are where consumers are spending large amounts of time online researching recipes, making household meal decisions and developing their grocery shopping lists. Australian websites within its network include Tastydays.com.au, Chefspencil.com.au and Recipelover.com.au to name just a few.

“Gourmet Ads allows advertisers to engage with our unique audience of Australian women aged 25 to 55, who make the household’s buying decisions every day,” said Benjamin Christie, Founder and Managing Director, Gourmet Ads. “Apart from influencing just FMCG purchases, our grocery buying audience also influences automotive, financial and travel buying decisions for households.”

The Gourmet Ads Network provides food and wine publishers the ability to monetise their website or blog. Working with AD2ONE, Gourmet Ads now provides Australian publishers with a total end-to-end advertising solution without the need to have a third-party ad server.

Australian Managing Director Phil Duffield is delighted to welcome Gourmet Ads into AD2ONE’s successful consumer portfolio, which also includes Coles Online, Best Restaurants and Lastminute.

“Gourmet Ads has created a great business model, which has helped to monetise big and small food and drink related websites globally. We are really pleased to be working with such a successful grocery brand aggregator as this really widens our scope to include some of the world’s most influential ‘long-tail’ food and drink websites,” said Phil Duffield, Managing Director, AD2ONE Australasia.

Source: Mumbrella

Gourmet Ads appoints AD2ONE 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.

Canadians have Great Taste in Food – Gourmet Ads Appoints UPTREND media

UPTREND media, Canada’s leading online advertising representation company, announces its exclusive partnership with Gourmet Ads the leading food advertising network. This agreement links two top advertising companies and provides UPTREND media the rights to exclusively represent Gourmet Ads in Canada.

The Gourmet Ads network consists of hundreds of premium food sites from around the world which allows us to reach millions of household grocery buyers online. A highly sought after audience for marketers, the household grocery buyer is typically female, aged 27 to 45 years old.

“Gourmet Ads is certainly the leader in online food advertising in the US and the UK,” says Jaimie Grossman, CEO of UPTREND media. “They know that Canadians have unique tastes when it comes to crafting nutritious and delicious meals. As we become a nation of more discerning food and beverage consumers, we become equally picky in our online content. UPTREND media is proud to deliver relevant content to over 2.5 million Canadian foodies through our Gourmet Ads partnership.”

With recipes being one of the most viewed types of content online, Gourmet Ads connects advertisers to a wide range of sites, from large specialized recipe portals, recipe search engines through to influential food blogs. Some of the sites featured include tastydays.com, recipepuppy.com, summerkitchen.tv, foodtube.net and nibbledish.com to name just a few.

“UPTREND media was the obvious choice in our search for a Canadian partner,” says Founder and Managing Director, Benjamin Christie. “Our specialization in developing food advertising online is perfectly complemented by UPTREND’s specialization in Canadian online audiences and advertising.”

Source : Click Weekly - Canadians have Great Taste in Food

Canadians have Great Taste in Food 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 is our first featured ad network.

We are quite pleased to have Gourmet Ads as our first featured ad network.

Gourmet Ads is a global vertical ad network reaching household Grocery Buyers with offices in North America, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. The Gourmet Ads network only represents quality food and wine websites throughout the world, aggregating and managing advertising across these highly relevant websites and blogs.

Below is our interview with Benjamin Christie, Managing Director and Founder of Gourmet Ads.

AdNetworks.NET: Currently, Gourmet Ads serves advertisers in the Food vertical who are trying to target consumers in USA, UK, Canada and Australia. Any other key market segments I am forgetting?

BC: No, those are our key geographical markets, but from an audience segment perspective Gourmet Ads concentrates on reaching the grocery buyer online. We tend to see this demographic being 27 – 55 year old female who makes the majority of the grocery buying decisions in the household. From a targeting perspective we then separate this up to 3 different age demographic targets enabling advertiser to target them via the sites in the network.

AdNetworks.NET: What competitive advantages does your previous experience as an Executive Chef, TV Co-Host, and Cookbook Author provide you when servicing your clients?

BC: Having experience in the food industry from being behind the stove to presenting recipes in front of a camera has certainly provided a great deal of understanding of what the public likes when it comes to food. Additionally having worked in online media and owned my own website prior to developing Gourmet Ads gave me real insight into how companies can use online to develop brand awareness and generate sales.

AdNetworks.NET: Without giving away your secrets, what makes for a successful campaign for an advertiser in your vertical looking to launch an online advertising campaign?

BC: The first is being relevant to our audience. Obviously food and wine advertisers have increased success simply because they are food and wine products. But we do run a great deal of advertising for non food or wine products and once again the advertising itself needs to be relevant to our audience of female, 27-55 years old. Areas that do perform well include Automotive, Travel, Financial and Lifestyle based campaigns.

The second is creative. There is no doubt that great looking creative with key messaging and strong calls to action outperforms ordinary ads. We highly recommend that clients produce Flash ads compared to static and we work hard with advertisers to develop creative that works. When possible we ask that they provide 2 or 3 sets of ads, so we can determine the best performing ad unit and messaging for campaign success.

AdNetworks.NET: How does working with Adify enhance your ability to deliver quality results for your advertiser and publisher partners?

Adify have been a great partner from day one and working with them has definitely given us competitive edge because of their platform. Adify provides us a wide range of targeting features allowing us to hone in on a client’s target market. Additionally working with Adify provides us the ability to manage hundreds of publisher relationships, opposed to just being an ad server.

AdNetworks.NET: Again, without giving away too much, are you finding certain technologies or targeting features most effective for an advertiser’s campaigns in your vertical?

Because we are a global network, every campaign we run must have some sort of geo targeting. We have the ability to go down to the zip level right up to country or global level. This has allowed us to work with smaller clients such as regional supermarkets and grocery store clients who only want to reach small areas such as 3 or 4 DMA’s. A fair percentage of clients are also using some sort of cookie based targeting as part of their campaigns.

AdNetworks.NET: Should small advertisers check out Gourmet Ads or do you primarily work with advertisers with a large ad spend?

Yes, we work with both global companies undertaking brand advertising right down to small family owned ecommerce sites requiring a direct response focus. Because of our geo targeting capabilites, we can restrict a advertising campaign to display locally in just a Zip Code, thus not wasting impressions in areas that are not relevant.

AdNetworks.NET: How do you define “quality content” when selecting publishers for your network?

The key is that unlike the majority of other ad networks, we simply don’t allow just any website to join and start running ad tags straight away. Every site we include in the Gourmet Ads network must adhere to our strict guidelines which are openly published on www.gourmetads.com. By rejecting unsuitable sites from the network means that we provide advertisers an environment which is brand safe and transparent.

For inclusion in the network, we look for a well designed website with uniquely developed content and a solid audience. We also work with sites to ensure they have ad units above the fold, thus making sites as attractive as we can for advertisers.

AdNetworks.NET: Ad exchanges have received significant media attention over the past 6 months.What are your thoughts on ad exchanges? Do you feel that comparing a premium, brand network to an ad exchange’s “remnant inventory” is “apples and oranges”?

We don’t use ad exchanges, because our clients require 100% transparency on which sites where their ads will run. Additionally because we have strict editorially criteria for sites to be included in the network we prefer not to run our ads on sites we don’t “know”.

AdNetworks.NET: Why should someone who hasn’t tried out a vertical network take a look?

BC: Particularly for food and wine advertisers, vertical ad networks such as Gourmet Ads provides advertisers the ability to buy and target advertising on multiple sites in one transaction, eliminating buying on a site-by-site basis. Because we specialise in food and wine, we know what works for advertisers and what doesn’t.

AdNetworks.NET: How has the ad network community developed since you got involved and where do you see it heading?

Since we started a few years back, the ad network community has certainly exploded which has increased the competition in the market place. Heading towards the future, I feel that there needs to be a little consolidation and I believe that as the economy returns, we’ll see acquisitions from not only other ad networks, but I believe they we’ll see media companies starting to buy into ad networks allowing them to increase their reach and viability in the long term.

AdNetworks.NET: Any exciting announcements/plans for the New Year?

As we roll into 2010, we’ve got lots on. The year starts with an advertising agency road show across London as we prepare to expand out UK network. Not only are we expanding the UK, but we’re recruiting more sites into the network enabling greater reach for clients, particularly in the US and Canada.

Throughout 2009 we’ve experienced a great deal of enquiry for beyond the banner placements, and we’re currently developing higher impact units for clients. Our team is working on about 4-5 different placements which can be deployed across hundreds of sites quickly and cost efficiently to provide greater ROI for advertising clients.

Source : www.adnetworks.net – Featured Ad Network – Gourmet Ads.

Featured Ad Network – Gourmet Ads 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.

For a little over a year, vertical ad network platform Adify has operated a centralized sales team to broker inventory for those of its network customers who want the service. Now the company is formalizing its ad network offering with the creation of a unit, called Adify Media, that will offer a menu of individual site placements bundled with online properties owned by its parent company, Cox Enterprises.

The combined reach of the ad network will approach 90 million uniques, approximately 17 million of which will be attributable to Cox’s own sites, according to ComScore.

Adify Media prides itself on its dedication to transparency for both buyer and seller. None of its inventory is offered on a blind basis, and its network partners — whom it calls network builders — are free to opt out of individual campaigns or the network as a whole. When its six regional ad sellers are dealing with a client, Adify does not mention the names of individual networks using its platform, so as to avoid channel conflict, focusing instead on the properties themselves.

For advertisers, Adify emphasizes highly customized ad packages and site-by-site deliverability reporting. Its reporting data can be viewed by ad space, line item, creative execution or ad size.

“I don’t think there’s another aggregator that offers anywhere near that level of pipeline visibility, handholding consulting, and the ability to opt in or out at granular levels,” said Joelle Gropper Kauffman, Adify’s SVP of marketing and corporate partnerships. “For us it’s all about people staying in control of their assets and their inventory.”

Adify Media is offering a degree of creative variation in its menu of ad formats. According to Gropper Kauffman, Adify is the primary ad server for many sites offered by its media team. Therefore, she noted, “we can do things you just don’t do with a network.” For instance, she said available formats could include expandable ads, sponsorships, roadblocks, and interstitial video. Standard targeting options will include geographic, behavioral, and browser-based delivery.

Key to Adify Media’s pitch is the supposition that mid-tail publishers of the sort that define its network have more engaged audiences than do major portals and ad networks. Its 160 network partners cover topic areas such as politics (Politico Network), lifestyle (Martha’s Circle), and food (Gourmet Ads).

Adify employs sales reps in New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Its team, led by general manager Rodney Mayers, has already sold campaigns to Best Western Hotels, Febreze, HP, and Microsoft, among others.

Source ; Clickz

Adify Rolls Out Centralized Ad Network 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.

I had a recent chat with Benjamin Christie, the founder and managing director of Gourmet Ads, an advertising network specializing in the food, wine and beer verticals. Powered by Adify, the company incorporated in June 2008.

How did you decide this was the right market?
With my experience at de Groots Media as well as being a food blogger for a number of years as well as being in the media I knew how online advertising worked. Having a background in the food industry, it was natural that I started an advertising network in the food space. Wine was the perfect pairing to go with the food vertical. Food is something that will continue to ride through the economic cloud. Sure there might be a downturn with some gourmet product ranges, but generally people still need to eat and companies still need to drive sales.

Who is your target audience?
For our food and wine verticals it’s very much a female demographic from 27 – 55 who cook at home, drink wine 2 -3 times a week and buy quality ingredients and cookware for home. For some of our other verticals such as beer and barbeque the skew is certainly male.

You launched this in Australia and are now spreading globally. You said your network’s competitors can also be its partners. What did you mean by that?
I regard our direct competitors as all the websites competing for the advertising dollar in our vertical. These could be small sites or blogs, through to national publishers. By publishers joining the Gourmet Ads network and outsourcing their advertising sales to us, this gives is the opportunity to act as a co-operative, providing agencies a compelling media buy, while providing steady revenue stream for our publishers.

I like to say that everyone thinks they are involved in the Manhattan Project. You seem to think you just find a niche and just want to be the best at it. Why is that your attitude and what perspective do you have about this niche that others maybe don’t?
We have a saying back in Australia “Jack of all trades master of none”, so I can believe that you can own and dominate a niche opposed to doing everything. I think this is why some of the horizontal networks are struggling in the market place because they have no identity and are trying to be everything to everyone. It’s impossible. Gourmet Ads is about food and wine. Our advertisers know that and this is why they advertise with us. In the years to come we may look at other verticals, but they will always be closely related to food and wine.

I think one of our advantages is being the boy from out of town. We take a global perspective, whereas a lot of American companies tend to think just about America. This has been evident in conversations with publishers that are shocked to learn they actually have a non-American audience and that we can monetize it.

Are you making a profit and do you expect to seek funding?
Although still very much in the start-up phase we are profitable. This is very much due to the lean organisational structure of the company at present and the outsourcing that we do. Gourmet Ads will most probably seek funding mid 2010 with the capital being put towards three areas of the business.

These being;

• Gaining the advertising rights to the premium publishers around the world.
• Acquiring and operating successful publishers within the network.
• Expanding into growth regions such as South East Asia.

By Edward Barrera, Editor of ADOTAS.

Source : Adotas

Going Global One Plate at a Time 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.

Australian advertisers are geared to more effectively target food, beer and wine enthusiasts following the launch of Australia’s first vertical advertising network for the fast moving consumer goods industry.
Vertical ad networks are a collection of websites that function as a one-stop-shop for purchasing and monitoring advertising across multiple sites.

While there has been a growing interest in niche culinary sites due to the TV celebrity chef phenomenon in recent years, Australian chef and creator of the Gourmet Ads network, Benjamin Christie, saw a need to respond to the problem of attracting advertising to long tail, niche publishers, including blogs, in the food and drink space by developing a network that would be a “win win” for advertisers, media buyers and publishers.

The Gourmet Ads network offers media buyers and advertisers the ability to purchase advertising across multiple sites and blogs in one transaction.

Lachlan Brahe, Sydney and Brisbane managing director at Emitch, said: “I’d like to think that Gourmet Ads will get some traction with FMCG advertisers by consolidating a large grocery buying audience into a single, simple media buy.”

Christie said the vertical network, powered by Adify, provides online publishers with a viable alternative to Google Adsense or Affiliate programs which he claims result in little revenue.

Gourmet Ads sells display ads on a CPM (cost per thousand) basis which Christie said offers publishers a better return than the cost per click structure used by Adsense.

Brahe said online advertising spend for FMCGs is low compared to other industry verticals. “Online media represents around 4% of the total advertising spend for FMCGs which is low considering the opportunity that digital media affords an advertiser to reach a main grocery buying audience,” he said.

Christie added: “Larger media companies don’t want to deal with smaller sites and blogs which generate 50,000 to 100,000 pages per month.”

Brahe believes the network, which currently represents two million Australian pages per month, will attract advertisers.

Source : B&T Magazine

Vertical Network Targets Foodies 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.

ITWire – Chef serves up Food Ad Network

An Australian chef aims to link major brands in the food and beverage markets with specialist web sites that cater for culinary enthusiasts.

Benjamin Christie – one of the first people to make content available on the Joost peer-to-peer Internet TV network – has launched Gourmet Ads, a service to deliver targeted advertising to blogs and other web sites that deal with food, wine and beer.

Gourmet Ads is initially building a network in Australia, and intends to expand into the US during early 2009.

“Advertisers that work with Gourmet Ads can target consumers that value high quality food, beer and wine. This audience relies on long-tail culinary sites for recipes, ideas and other resources that satisfy their interests,” said Christie.

“Marketers need to reach them on the sites that they visit, while they are in the right frame of mind and are thinking about food.”

Gourmet Ads is powered by Adify, which already operates ad networks aimed at the travel, pet, arts and culture, technology, movie and entertainment, and home improvement markets, among others.

“Benjamin’s expertise as a television presenter, cookbook author and culinary educator has led to the creation of one of the most unique ad networks to date,” said Russ Fradin, president of Adify.

“Today, long-tail culinary sites are being sought due to the growing interest in cooking and food in general, which has not only hit the United States but other countries as well. With more individuals gravitating towards the kitchen table, an effective way of reaching them is through vertical ad networks that cater to the need of the culinarily engaged,” added Fradin.

Source : iTWire – Chef serves up Food Ad Network

Chef serves up Food Ad Network 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, Food Ad Network

Australian Chef Benjamin Christie today launched Gourmet Ads, the first Australian vertical advertising network focused on delivering major brand advertising to food, wine and beer enthusiasts. Gourmet Ads is powered by Adify, the premier vertical ad network management company, to harness culinary enthusiasts and enable marketers to reach this engaged audience. The network encompasses food, wine, and beer blogs and Web sites in Australia, with plans for expansion to the United States early next year.

With a lack of options in Australia to monetize Web sites, Christie saw a need for a gourmet vertical ad network to help advertisers fight growing fragmentation and reach the long-tail food, beer and wine sites, while helping those sites generate revenue from brand advertising. A highly sought after audience for marketers, food enthusiasts are typically high-income females 27 to 45 years of age. With most Australian marketers still focusing on this audience through traditional print and television media, opportunities in the online space remain untapped. Adify’s ad serving technology coupled with Christie’s expertise and relationships with publishers helps marketers reach an audience that generates over three million page views per month for Gourmet Ads.

“The market in Australia is much different than that in the U.S. and brand marketers continuously gravitate to traditional media outlets, forgetting how successful the Internet can be in targeting highly engaged audiences such as food enthusiasts,” said Benjamin Christie of Gourmet Ads. “Advertisers that work with Gourmet Ads can target consumers that value high quality food, beer and wine. This audience relies on long-tail culinary sites for recipes, ideas and other resources that satisfy their interests. Marketers need to reach them on the sites that they visit, while they are in the right frame of mind and are thinking about food.”

Adify is providing the Gourmet Ads network with the key network management services required to execute successful advertising campaigns, including ad management, tracking, reporting, billing, payment and technical support functions. This infrastructure is capable of delivering content sponsorships, video, image and rich media advertising for its various network partners. Gourmet Ads editorial board hand-selects publishing partners for the ad network and is currently representing a cross section of popular Australian food blogs and recipe websites.

“Benjamin’s expertise as a television presenter, cookbook author and culinary educator has led to the creation of one of the most unique ad networks to date,” said Russ Fradin, president of Adify. “Today, long-tail culinary sites are being sought due to the growing interest in cooking and food in general, which has not only hit the United States but other countries as well. With more individuals gravitating towards the kitchen table, an effective way of reaching them is through vertical ad networks that cater to the need of the culinarily engaged.”

Source : Reuters

Adify Cooks Up Food Ad Network 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.