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.
Easter Advertising
March 3, 2010 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
This year Easter is the first week of April (dates below) and even if you don’t sell chocolate Easter eggs there are significant opportunities over the holiday period for all types of industries. Once regarded simply for the kids, Easter has become one of the most profitable holiday seasons of the year.
With spring in the air and many consumers possessing tax return money makes it an ideal time for you to kick-start your marketing campaign. As such we thought we’d put together a few Easter advertising ideas separated by various sectors.
Retailers
Given that Easter is of course a holiday period, many retailers run Easter Sales and to drive interest in the lead up is important. So running at least 10 days prior to the sale starting is essential, then upping the visibility over the Easter weekend to drive consumers in store. Ideally you’ll be running discounts off big ticket items and winter apparel.
Grocery & Supermarkets
With many people spending time with the family over Easter it’s important to gain market share in the lead up to the Easter Weekend. Ideally your Easter Advertising will feature creative with messaging to drive consumers in store like discounts off key staples items or loss leader activity encourage them to do their Easter “big shop” while in store.
Travel Companies
With most people spending time with their families over the Easter weekend, there are two opportunities here for travel companies. Firstly, with many people head home there is a significant benefit for companies such as airlines to go heavy up 3-4 weeks prior to Easter, then slow it down closer to the weekend. The 2nd opportunity is for people not heading home, but rather going away for the weekend. So vacation specials should be advertised 10-14 days from Easter weekend. See Grocery Buyers make Travel Decisions.
Ecommerce Sites
Many of the major ecommerce retailers run Easter weekend specials, from free shipping to coupon discounts so why let them have all the business? In the lead up to Easter why not run a campaign targeted at consumers with creative indicating your Easter specials. So no matter if you sell food, clothing or kitchen gadgets, Easter is a great time to boost sales.
Movie Releases
Many over the Easter weekend will be looking for things to do to fill out the weekend. So for the movie studios, running movie trailer campaigns for new release in the days prior and over the Easter weekend will help boost a movies weekend revenues.
Automotive Companies & Dealerships
Consumers in the market for a new auto will dedicate the weekend heading to dealerships and doing test drives. So running a campaign in the 5-7 days prior to Easter, then heavy up over the Easter weekend will no doubt result in leads being generated. Learn about our audience of automotive buying Grocery Buyers.
So as we head in Q2 and with only a few weeks to go till Easter now is the time to book your Easter Advertising Campaign. For more information, Download our Media Kit or Request a Proposal from our team.
2010 Easter Dates
Good Friday is 2nd April 2010
Holy Saturday 3rd April 2010
Easter Sunday 4th April 2010
Easter Monday 5th April 2010
London Food Blogs
March 1, 2010 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
Gourmet Ads is currently seeking London based Food Bloggers to join our UK network.
So what are we looking for?
Ideally you’ll be producing your own recipe and food content on a regular basis and have a great base of traffic, but most importantly you’ll be based in the UK. This is important as some advertisers only want to advertise on UK based sites. Join the Gourmet Ads network now.
We’ll totally manage your advertising inventory and provide monthly revenue. Other key features and benefits of Gourmet Ads for publishers include;
- Non-exclusive relationship
- Majority of advertisers are companies in the food, wine, beer, travel and lifestyle space.
- CPM based advertising campaigns
- Sponsorship advertising campaigns
- Advertising Reporting Portal
- Ability to run your own house ads
- Flexibility and scalability – we can manage some or all of your inventory
- Strong focus on advertising campaigns in UK, USA and Canada
- Monetize your content globally – sales teams in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, London and Sydney
You may have your own internal sales teams or be part of another ad network. That’s fine with us, because we offer a non-exclusive relationship which means you can use the Gourmet Ads network as back fill. We ask that if you do work with another ad network that you offer all networks an equal allocation.
Finally, for all publishers we offer a free program to help increase your traffic, called the Gourmet Ads Traffic Booster Program.
So if you have a recipe site or food blog that you’d like to monetize, Join the Gourmet Ads network now.
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.
UK Recipe Sites Wanted
February 24, 2010 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
Gourmet Ads is currently seeking UK recipe sites and UK food blogs to join our UK network.
So what are we looking for?
Ideally you’ll be producing your own recipe and food content on a regular basis and have a great base of traffic, but most importantly you’ll be based in the UK. This is important as some advertisers only want to advertise on UK based sites. Join the Gourmet Ads network now.
We’ll totally manage your advertising inventory and provide monthly revenue. Other key features and benefits of Gourmet Ads for publishers include;
- Non-exclusive relationship
- Majority of advertisers are companies in the food, wine, beer, travel and lifestyle space.
- CPM based advertising campaigns
- Sponsorship advertising campaigns
- Advertising Reporting Portal
- Ability to run your own house ads
- Flexibility and scalability – we can manage some or all of your inventory
- Strong focus on advertising campaigns in UK, USA and Canada
- Monetize your content globally – sales teams in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, London and Sydney
You may have your own internal sales teams or be part of another ad network. That’s fine with us, because we offer a non-exclusive relationship which means you can use the Gourmet Ads network as back fill. We ask that if you do work with another ad network that you offer all networks an equal allocation.
Finally, for all publishers we offer a free program to help increase your traffic, called the Gourmet Ads Traffic Booster Program.
So if you have a recipe site or food blog that you’d like to monetize, Join the Gourmet Ads network now.
Dynamic Ads
February 19, 2010 by Benjamin Christie · 2 Comments
Imagine being able to control and change the entire content, messaging or call to action of a display campaign in just a few minutes. There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that fresh creative as part of a campaign significantly increases click through and engagement rates.
Dynamic ads are generally created in Flash or HTML and instead of the content being written into the files, the content is sourced from a server live or cached. The content could be fed into the ad by a RSS feed or there are some companies specializing in creating and developing dynamic ads.
Developing a creative execution paired together with consumer behaviour in the form of cookies could significantly increase sales. For example Amazon has been using dynamic ads for years, integrating products you’ve looked at into their ad units. Adding in both to behavioural data, geotargeting data could also be applied to the add.
Dynamic Ads sound great but what are some practical uses or examples?
- Supermarkets could publish today’s special together with a product photo
- ecommerce sites could publish today’s product of the day
- Airlines and hotels could publish a hot vacation deal or cheap flight of the day
- Your brands Twitter conversation (as above)
- Sponsors of sports games like Superbowl or Football World Cup could publish the score in real time
- TV stations could publish what’s on tonight’s line up
- News companies could publish the current headlines
- Restaurant chains could advertise todays specials
As you can see the ideas are endless and are really only limited by your imagination. The team at Gourmet Ads can help develop dynamic ad concepts to reality and deliver them to our audience of highly engaged grocery buyers.
For more information about Dynamic Ads or Gourmet Ads, Download our Media Kit or Request a Proposal from our team.
Featured Ad Network – Gourmet Ads
February 16, 2010 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
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 Co-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.
The full interview can be found at www.adnetworks.net
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.
