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
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.
More Cooking at Home
August 15, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
The recession has certainly changed the behavior of consumers greatly when it comes to cooking at home. A recent study by Zagat survey confirms that since the economic downturn, 61 percent of those surveyed say they’re cooking dinner at home more than before. Not surprisingly, only 1 percent of the respondents said they’re cooking less. Although this study was specifically into the eating habits of New Yorkers, the increased trend of cooking at home is no doubt widespread across the nation as people cook to save money. There is no doubt that less people are eating out at restaurants in order to save money. With more cooking at home, I thought I’d look at who is benefiting from this trend as well as how companies with the most to reap can interact and engage with consumers online.
Supermarkets, Grocery Store and even Gourmet providores are seeing the benefits of people eating in. Many supermarkets are now printing recipes ideas as soon as you enter the supermarket in order to help consumers choose something for dinner. Companies that market core ingredients have the most to benefit, which is why nearly every supermarket has developed their own brand of private label products. One supermarket has even developed two of their own private label brands; one which is cheap and the other a little more gourmet proving consumers a real choice.
So supermarkets and grocery stores have a real opportunity to expand their consumer base during the economic downturn. One such strategy to increase market share would be to run a campaign with a CRM focus asking consumers for their contact details including email address. Then supermarkets and grocery stores could run a series of email campaigns sending weekly catalogs, discount vouchers or any other special offers. Alternatively they could send a weekly newsletter with ideas of what can be cooked this coming week with links to the shopping list making it super simple for consumers to go to the store and buy the ingredients.
The other major industries to see growth from the downturn in eating out, is both kitchen appliance manufacturers and companies that make and sell kitchen accessories or cookware. I recently was talking with a company that sells a $1000 kitchen appliance. They indicated that they are nearly selling double the about of individual units than they were last year. Another manufacturer who makes a kitchen appliance for around the $100 is also seeing product sales increase. This illustrates how people still have money, but are looking longer term than just months with them prepared to invest in new kitchen appliances in order to save money.
For any company selling kitchen appliances, the key to educating consumers on how to use their products is via recipes. One such strategy for online campaigns would be via a branded recipe widget which allows people to search for recipes which can be made with their products. People eat with their eyes, so making sure every recipes has a image is key to the success of any recipe based marketing program.
So if you’re tasked with increase consumers to your supermarket / grocery store or are tasked at selling more kitchen appliances, now is the time to develop an advertising campaign to take advantage of the trend of more cooking at home. Gourmet Ads can certainly help you develop either short term advertising campaigns or long multi month campaigns to hit your sales and revenue targets. For more information, download our media kit or request a proposal from us.
Cocktail Widgets
August 13, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
We’ve previously talked about how food companies can use Recipe Widgets to educate consumers about how to use their food products in meals. Many recipe widgets allow consumers to read and print recipes or even watch videos within the widget. So taking this same approach, companies that market and advertise alcoholic beverages or spirits can do the same by creating a Cocktail Widget.
Unless you’ve worked in a cocktail bar, most people only know a handful of cocktail recipes and most have no clue on what they could create. Depending on your focus and obviously your product, a Cocktail Widget could simply present a database of cocktails together with photos and videos and allow users to choose a cocktail and print it from the widget. Or the widget could present a random cocktail of the day. The ideas are endless and all can provide significant branding for your alcoholic beverages or spirits.
Working together with your marketing staff, Gourmet Ads can not only help develop the widget, but our team can distribute your cocktail widget through our network of sites providing instant reach for your brand online. Add to this our audience will be inline with your target demographics as well.
If you’re interested in either developing a cocktail widget or seeking to have your existing widget distributed via our highly targeted audience, then contact us for a proposal. For more information about Gourmet Ads download our media kit.
Food Advertising Ideas
August 1, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
A while ago we wrote a blog on Wine Advertising Ideas which was aimed at smaller wineries, wine companies and pretty much anyone who was tasked with marketing and advertising wines. To date the blog is in our top ten blogs of all time. So now its time for a blog on Food Advertising Ideas, and like the wine blog this one is aimed at small to medium sized food businesses as well as multinationals which are yet to start advertising online.
So if you’re in do food marketing or food advertising this blog will give you some food advertising ideas which lay as the foundation for any advertising campaigns you plan to run.
- Brand Advertising
Mostly undertaken by large food companies is brand advertising. This is where the message is simply the brand and is created to engage the user and provide brand awareness so your product stands out on the shelf. Some of the key messages when advertising food brands is why your product is different, the places you can buy it and price if appropriate. - Product Based Campaigns
Say you’ve got a number of products that you retail. Well choose 12 products that you want to start advertising and every month focus on running a campaign for a different product. Keep in mind seasonality of the products, ie there is no point promoting winter soups in the middle of summer. The key here is to develop new creative every month. Additionally and from a media buying perspective clients that book 12 months of media with Gourmet Ads can receive significantly discounted CPM rates opposed to spot buys. - Acquisition Campaign
Taking a very direct marketing approach, running an acquisition campaign every other month with large reach to your target audience is one way that you can acquire new emails. Considered by some as a CRM campaign, once you’ve acquired a reasonable amount of email contacts, you can start emailing them directly. - Campaigns Advertising Competitions
This could be the under lying strategy for your Acquisition Campaign, but competitions are an excellent method of building brand awareness and building your email database. The key here is to offer a “great prize” opposed to just a prize. Consumers want to win something great. We’ve recently run a competition to have a celebrity chef cook in your house for the night which has attracted literally thousands of entires and isn’t really related to the brand being advertised. - Recipe Widgets
No matter what your food product, consumers love learning how to use your product in everyday cooking. So a widget featuring your recipes which use your food products can be very engaging to an audience which is looking for recipes. These simple rich media units are typically 300 x 250 island ad units and we traffic them to sites within our network. We can track engagements, displays, click throughs etc just like a regular ad unit. – Learn more about Recipe Widgets here. - Retailer Advertising Campaign
Telling your consumers where they can buy your products is very important, it’s the reason why you’ve probably got a long list of them on your website called “Where to Buy”. Have you ever thought about a co-promotion with the retailer to drive sales in-store? Your advertising could drive people to a landing page which told people of the offer or allowed them to print a coupon to get the discount. What ever the offer is, both you and the retailer benefit which is why you could share the advertising costs with them allowing you reach a great number of consumers. - TVC Campaigns Online
Taking your television commercial and simply repurposing for online can be a great way to further expand the reach of your campaign. Either formatted into a 300 x 250 ad unit, standalone video player or interstitial page, your video can make an impact. - Online Food Companies (Ecommerce)
Although many food companies sell their products through supermarkets, grocery stores of gourmet retailers, there are a great deal of food companies that only sell online. So for online food companies when it’s all about generating a sale online, we can provide a raft of solutions to generate sales. From wide reaching media to highly targeted Behavioural targeting campaigns, we can target your advertising to you most likely customer.
So no matter what the focus for your food advertising campaign, Gourmet Ads can deliver. For more Food Advertising Ideas, download our media kit or Request a Proposal from us.
Expandable Ad Units
July 9, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
Advertisers and particularly advertising agencies are always looking at techniques to engage with an audience online and showcase their brand. One such way is via Expandable Ad Units. Expandable Ad Units do as they suggest; they expand outside of their usual size and spread over the top of the page content, either by auto expand, on click or rollover. Audio and video need to be initiated users directly. Gourmet Ads now offers Expandable Ad Units on all 3 creative sizes, which are 300 x 250, 728 x 90 and 160 x 600. See Gourmet Ads Expandable Ad Specifications.
One of the great things about Expandable Ad Units is the ability to include video not only in the initial load, but in the expand offering a rich experience to audiences. Add to this the increase in real estate allows you to add more features than you’d normally include in an ad unit. Some of the expanding ad units we’ve run are very “widget like” allowing users to interact with them more. You could also collect data from the user, or offer a print out – all done in the ad unit.
In our experience, Expandable Ad Units vastly out perform regular creative by at least 30% campaign to campaign. This because the campaign is visually appealing to the audience, encouraging them to engage with the campaign directly. Combine both Expandable Ad Units and regular display ads together in a road blocking campaign and you’ll have the same sort of reach that TV achieves.
So how could you as the advertiser use Expandable Ad Units on the Gourmet Ads network?
Easy, here are a few quick ideas;
- Showcase a product in a recipe with video and techniques
- Show a map of your all of your stores
- Celebrity Chef using your products via a video
- New wine release with a video from the wine maker
- Food and Wine pairing
- Movie Trailer
- New Car Release
If you’re looking at undertaking an advertising campaign and need to make an impact, consider using Expandable Ad Units. For more information, please download our media kit or request a proposal from us.
Beyond the Banner
June 3, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · 1 Comment
Nearly every RFP (request for proposal) we’ve seen for digital advertising this year has mentioned the phrase “Beyond the Banner” or some sort of related comment like “we’re looking for something further than just regular display advertising”. Why? Because advertisers (and advertising agencies) know that these sorts of campaigns build branding and driving purchase intent.
Recent increases in bandwidth as well as technology developments in Flash and Silverlight have meant that there is no excuse for not using rich media as a standard inclusion for the every campaign. Now advertisers can use creative assets such as streaming video to get the message across. All of a sudden internet looks far more attractive than compared to TV. For the first time advertisers can run a video advertisement (for longer than 30 seconds) like that would have on TV and then engage with them right then and there. Have them go to your website, purchase a product, signup for a newsletter, follow them on Twitter.
So what options does Gourmet Ads typically include on a digital media plan for clients? Each and every digital media plan is different. We’ll take a look at the target audience, how they want to communicate with the client and the ultimate aim for the campaign. But broadly these are some for the Beyond the Banner activity we would recommend to a client;
- Over the Page
- Site Sponsorship
- Viral Video Campaign
- Expanding video ad units
- Push Down Expandables
Gourmet Ads isn’t a creative house, but providing you can supply us with your existing creative (even offline creative) we will have them redeveloped into rich media for your Beyond the Banner campaign. We work with leading developers in the US to develop all the assets for your campaign.
Finally, apart from the Beyond the Banner elements, we always include regular display on our digital media plans. ie 728 x 90 (leaderboard), 300 x250 (MREC or Island) and 160 x600 (skyscrapers). This is because as good as the rich media beyond the banner activity is, the display ads which are closely surrounding them or viewed after the fact get the clicks. Think of beyond the banner as informing and entertaining them and display which gains the engagement and fulfillment.
So if you’re looking to reach a unique audience of food and wine consumers using Beyond the Banner creative or just want to learn more about what can be done online, then download our media kit or request a proposal from our team.
