High Visibility Placements are Popular for 2012 Media Planning

We’re only a few months into 2011 and there is already a lot of media planning and buying for advertising campaigns in 2012. Just like last year, the RFPs we’re seeing now from digital advertising agencies are mostly for companies planning media from July 2011 through to June 2012 activity. Also like last year, the budgets of RFPs continue to increase, suggesting that advertising budgets are moving away are traditional advertising areas like print and television.

The current trend on most of the 2012 Media Planning RFPs is around high visibility placements. Sure regular display ad units (728×90, 300×250 and 160×600) continue to be the most requested by advertisers, however many advertising agencies are now requesting high visibility units for maximum impact. This includes the 300×600 ad unit as well as Video Advertising, Background Skins, Intersitials and Over the Page, We believe this trend will continue right into 2012 and beyond.

2012 Media Planning that we’re undertaking for advertisers, starts with display ad units for maximum reach across the duration of the plan. Depending on the client and their own goals, we’ll create peak activity around key periods in their year. Some advertisers will want their peak activity around holidays, others will prefer it to be on a weekly basis concentrating on one or two days of the week. Whatever your goals, we’ll develop a media plan that exceeds your goals.

Brands are already undertaking 2012 Media Planning

Interestingly the majority of 2012 Media Planning we’ve seen so far has been for non-endemic advertisers, ie non food and wine companies. Advertising agencies have recognized the value of our female grocery buying audience which has seen RFPs from companies in tourism, financial, automotive and retail spaces indicating that many brand advertisers are seeking quality inventory out of their “safe” and endemic advertising locations.

Gourmet Ads can help you or your advertising agency develop your 12 month plan to target your audience online throughout the year. By booking media in advance (either 6 month or 12 months) allows us to offer significant discounts on CPM rates and bonus impressions increasing your return on investment. Contact Us now if you’re undertaking 2012 Media Planning.

2012 Media Planning 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.

We are seeing Increased Advertising Budgets with 2011 Media Planning

Believe it or not a great deal of digital advertising agencies are already undertaking their 2011 Media Planning for their clients. The RFPs from agencies coming in right now are mostly for companies undertaking media planning from July 2010 through to June 2011 activity. This is very different from media planning which we experienced last year with most planning taking place either a couple of days from going live or at a maximum of 8 weeks in advance.

Interestingly most companies have increased their budgets for 2011 Media Planning by approximately 2 to 2 and half times from that in 2009/2010. Many of the companies we deal directly with in the food, wine, tourism and kitchen appliance industries are all looking at online as a cost effective channel to achieve growth in sales.

Already apparent across 2011 media planning that we’ve seen is the shift from the performance based metric of just click through rate (CTR) over to the broader brand based metric of engagement rate. The move to engagement rates suggests that a heavy emphasis will be placed on creative development in 2011, using high visibility units such as video. This is very different from the past where most campaigns booked consisted of only regular display units such as 728×90, 300×250 and 160×600. Its seems that agencies are planning to use creative such as pre roll video, widgets, long term integration, dynamic ads, expandable ad units, background advertising and interstitial advertising all which can be executed through Gourmet Ads. We’re also seeing a lot of requests for social networking elements as part of campaigns.

Many Food and Wine Brands are already undertaking 2011 Media Planning

For companies in the Food and Wine space, Gourmet Ads is a natural fit, but some of the media planning we’ve seen in 2011 is for companies outside of this space. Advertising agencies have recognised the value of our female grocery buying audience which has led to RFPs in the tourism, financial, automotive spaces indicating that many brand advertisers are seeking quality inventory out of their “safe” advertising places that they used in 2009 and Q1 2010.

Gourmet Ads can help you or your advertising agency develop your 12 month plan to target your audience online throughout the year. By booking media in advance (either 6 month or 12 months) allows us to offer significant discounts on CPM rates and bonus impressions increasing your return on investment. For more information about 2011 Media Planning, Contact Us.

2011 Media Planning 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 the click through rates on campaigns with Gourmet Ads

Gourmet Ads focuses on providing advertisers the best platform for their advertising campaign. We do this by only editorially selecting sites we feel will perform. But ultimately for brand advertisers they gauge success by the engagement rate of the campaign, while direct response advertisers gauge success on the click through rates or CTR of the campaign.

So from an advertiser perspective what can be done to increase the click through rate on campaigns? What do you have to do for your campaign to out perform? Well there are a number of tasks that can be undertake to significantly increase your click-through-rate.

Advertising Creative
Often disregarded by advertisers if you’re creative isn’t professionally designed with clear call to actions and messaging its hard to simply expect people to click on your ads. Check out a recent blog we wrote about Creative Advertising which goes through some of the necessary things to think about when designing your creative.

Media Buying in Relevant Content / Channels
Well if you’re reading this you’re obviously aware that Gourmet Ads is a food and wine advertising network. As such campaigns with a food or wine focus or targeted at audiences of food and wine sites perform exceptionally well. Travel, Finance and Automotive all perform very well on the Gourmet Ads network (see Automotive Advertising). So the key here is that you should book media for your campaign on networks where the content is related to the product you’re advertising.

Frequency Capping
You’ve probably seen on media plans things like 1/48 or 5/24 well these are indicators for media planners on how many impressions to display per day per user. 1/48 meant the user will see 1 impression every 2 two days, while 5/24 means 5 impressions per day. 1/48 is commonly used for trafficking an interstitial or over the page creative, while 5/24 is for regular display. Frequency Capping helps increase your click thought rate because a user isn’t bombarded by your ads.

Multiple Creative
Say you have 5/24 frequency capping on your campaign, then to increase the click through rate one strategy could be to have 5 different ads within your media campaign. That way users are not seeing the same ad but fresh ads during their site visit. This increases the chance of them clicking on the ads and driving up the click through rate for the campaign.

Use a Price and Call to Action in Your Ads
This may seem obvious, but if you don’t ask users to do something then they probably won’t do it. So if you want people to click on ad, then you’d be best to have a strong call to action in the messaging asking them to do so. Some advertising creative has fixed part of the advert for messaging like “Click for more info” with the aim of increasing the click through rate.

Use Geo Targeting
There’s no point advertising your product or service to a country or state that your advertising isn’t relevant to.  So Gourmet Ads insists on placing some sort of geo targeting restrictions on campaigns to ensure that users clicking on your ad are likely to be customers. By using geo targeting the click through rate will also be higher because the messaging is relevant, thus increasing the amount of clicks for your campaign.

Use DayPart Targeting
Most campaigns run on Gourmet Ads are either food or wine campaigns, and as such they are aimed at times and days of the week when it’s appropriate to target consumers. For example when advertising food products between 9am to 10pm each day, they have a higher click through rate compared to if they were trafficked over a 24 hour period. Conversely wine products advertised Wednesday to Sunday have a higher click through rate compared to running them 7 days a week.

Roadblock Advertising
Ideally used for key days like Black Friday or Memorial Day, Roadblock advertising can increase the click through rate because every single impression for that day is for your campaign. When running your advertising campaign across a network such as Gourmet Ads, roadblock advertising provides a wide reaching media buy with similar metrics to those of TV media buy.

Campaign Optimization
One of the ways we as network operators can help increase your click through rate for the campaign is to run optimization on the campaign. We can filter out all the ad units which are not performing at the desired click though rates and removing them from the buy instantly.

Increasing Click Through Rates 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.