Food Ad Network Will Grow Site’s Content, Already 1.7 Million Recipes Strong

Food advertising network Gourmet Ads today announced it has acquired RecipeBridge, the leading recipe search engine, for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition will give Gourmet Ads’ legion of content consumers access to RecipeBridge’s more than 1.7 million dishes from over 350 recipe sites.

RecipeBridge (www.recipebridge.com), founded by Milwaukee, Wisc.-based GroupHigh, is a contextual search engine that lets cooks search by food type, recipe name, ingredients, keywords, and even by special diet. A simple search of “chicken,” for example, will bring up more than 131,000 chicken recipes, which can then be refined in order to locate the perfect dish.

“Our goal is to build the largest recipe search engine, combining recipe sites, blogs, food brands and supermarkets into one destination,” said Benjamin Christie, founder and managing director of Gourmet Ads. “RecipeBridge will provide home cooks the ability to find the perfect recipe quickly and easily, no matter where on the Internet it’s located.”

Gourmet Ads will begin investing in RecipeBridge immediately, both from a content aggregation perspective as well as developing new consumer-focused features for the site. Online recipe publishers can add their sites to the search engine via a simple submission page.

Not only will this help home cooks find the best recipes from around the world, but publishers will also benefit since RecipeBridge will send cooks directly to their sites.

Click here for Press Inquires

Gourmet Ads Acquires RecipeBridge 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.

Branded Recipes are Recipes featuring your Brand’s own Ingredients

One of the most consistent findings in research about today’s consumers shows that they are constantly on the lookout for new ways to prepare meals for their families. Grocery Buyers spend time searching for new recipes, and companies who can provide smart recipe ideas see sales of their products increase. Most grocery buyers unknowingly create associations between brands and favorite recipes- for example, Rice Krispies Treats, Tollhouse chocolate chip cookies or Chex Party Mix. These recipes are among the favorites in many kitchens, and each time a customer decides to cook one of these foods, they purchase items from specific manufacturers and improve the reputation of the brand. These kitchen favorites are known as branded recipes, and are one of the most effective marketing tools you can use.

Creating branded recipes is simpler than you may think. In many cases, it is as easy as publishing a recipe on your website. For a recipe to have maximum impact, it should be accompanied by a picture, tempting viewers to try out a new recipe that uses your product. Traditionally, recipes that don’t have a picture are far less successful, making a good food “photo shoot” an important part of the recipe. For those companies who are ready to take the idea one step further, creating a video that describes how to make the dish can be a fun, interactive addition to your website. Recipe ideas can also be incorporated into print or media advertising, product packaging, or in-store displays to reach a larger audience.

Consumers Trust Branded Recipes

Once you have decided to try using a branded recipe for your product, the question becomes what recipe to use. While there are test kitchens and other services available that can help you come up with ideas, you can use the process of finding the perfect recipe to bring attention to your product. Today’s consumer is often very food-savvy, and you can use their interest in food to come up with the perfect recipe idea. One idea is to hold a recipe contest, asking your consumers to come up with ideas for the best recipe using your product. Allow customers to test out the recipe and vote for their favorite, or arrange a judging of top entries to select a winning recipe. You may also consider creating a recipe booklet full of ideas using your product to distribute to customers. Remember to test out each recipe yourself to ensure that it makes good use of your product and highlights the benefits of using your brand.

Another idea is to take advantage of the celebrity chef trend. From Iron Chef to Paula Dean, there are a large number of big-name chefs who may be willing to endorse your brand by creating a special recipe just for you. Think about the product you are selling and which popular chefs would best represent that idea. Once you have the endorsement of a celebrity chef, you can use your newly branded recipe along with images of that chef to promote your product in a number of ways. Many shoppers are also dedicated food television watchers, so a recipe created by a certain chef that endorses your brand can be a great way to bring new consumers to your product.

Once you’ve published Branded Recipes on your site, Gourmet Ads can develop a wide reaching advertising campaign to drive grocery buyers to the site. Ask for ideas how else you can use Branded Recipes.

Publishing Branded Recipes 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.

Brand Advertising Next to Recipes is a Great Positioning Tool

How much more targeted can an ad get than to be a food ingredient placed directly next to a recipe that calls for that ingredient? Branding is everything when it comes to marketing food products and the most effective way to brand your product is to use the most targeted advertising possible. Think about how many people choose a brand because they are making a specific recipe. We’d be willing to bet that Campbell’s sells more Cream of Mushroom soup during the holidays than any other brand. Why? Because for years they have placed the recipe for “Green Bean Casserole” right on the package. People decide to make green bean casserole for Thanksgiving dinner and they immediately think, “Campbell’s”.

This same branding phenomenon can work for any food product at any time of year. The goal is to make your brand synonymous with the recipes your product can be used in. The great thing for today’s online advertisers is that more and more people are turning to online recipes for their cooking needs. In fact, according to a recent report by Nielsen’s Net Ratings, at least 60% of people who shop online also use online recipes. This means that the audience for your ingredients is not only extremely targeted, it is also huge! Many people have a computer in or near the kitchen and it is extremely convenient for them to just hop online and search for a recipe, much easier than remembering which cookbook it is in!

Imagine your food ingredient placed directly next to recipes that call for that ingredient?

Many of your target group of consumers will not only search online for a recipe, they will also run straight to the store to get needed ingredients right after viewing the recipe and they will usually print the recipe to take with them. That means that if your product is advertised next to the recipe your brand will already be in their hands when they make a purchase decision. How much easier does it get than that?

If you want to find out more about advertising next to recipes on your next digital campaign, contact Gourmet Ads for more information.

Advertising Next to Recipes 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.

50% of online users are looking for Online Recipes

We recently wrote a blog called Recipes for 50% which talked about how some research by JupiterResearch which indicated that 50% of online users are looking for food and cooking information online. Since then we’ve been told about some research from Nielsen’s NetRatings, which like Jupiter has determined that the most popular food related activity online is searching for recipes. So I thought we’d go a little bit deeper into this trend and look at why consumers are heading online to search for recipes and how advertisers can reap the rewards of this trend.

So why are consumers moving online to find recipes? Well there is no doubt that consumers prefer to search and find recipes online opposed to ploughing through cookbooks to find a recipe.

Searching for Online Recipes is quick and easy, but other reasons include;

• Cost – nearly every online recipe site is free
• Video Recipes – More and more recipes sites are now including videos on how to cook particular recipes. So instead of trying to workout how to create a particular recipe, you can site and watch the recipe being created first then make it yourself.
• Recipe Authors – The majority of recipe websites publisher user generated recipes which are created by everyday cooks opposed to chefs. As such most recipes online tend to have a family focus opposed to a fine dining experience.
• Social interaction – many recipes sites allow you rate recipes their. Consumers who have cooked recipes previously can provide comments and suggestions about the recipes, helping you steer away from recipes that don’t work.
• Extensive choice - there are literally hundreds of thousands if not millions of recipes online compared to the 100 or so in a cookbook. You can compare recipe against recipe and determine the ones that look the best.
• Search by ingredients – For people that have an ingredient in the cupboard or fridge they want to use. On most recipe sites they allow you to search by that particular ingredient showing recipes that use the ingredient.

So how can food companies reach this audience of food consumers and household grocery buyers. We know because of our audience profiling at Gourmet Ads that people that visit online recipe sites tend to be the household grocery buyer. As such advertising along side recipes can have a significant effect on sales at the supermarket. Gourmet Ads can develop a strategically placed advertising campaign where you’re advertising is place along side Online Recipes.

Advertising Online Recipes 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.

50% of online users are looking for Recipes and Cooking Info Online

An interesting report from JupiterResearch called “Targeting Online Food Lovers — Identifying Segments and Online Advertising Opportunities,” reveals that 50% of online users are looking for food and cooking information online. Let me say that again – 50% of online users are looking for food and cooking information online.

Monique Levy of JupiterResearch noted that food fans typically are looking for the specific information found on food sites, rather than the more general food information found on health and wellness sites. “Online food lovers use food destination sites and manufacturer sites the most, rather than branded product sites and health- and lifestyle-related Websites,” Ms. Levy said.

This research shows that it’s not just foodies which use the internet to research recipes, but in actual fact it’s the wider internet audience who uses the internet as a resource for food information. This in turn means that advertising in and around recipes can have a huge effect at the supermarket checkout. One thing that the report also indicated was that people are not looking for cheap foods online, rather they are seeking information on gourmet or organic products.

So where does the half of the internet looks for food, recipes and cooking information online?

Well if you take a look at the sites within the Gourmet Ads network, they are typically;

• Recipe Portals
• Regional Recipe Sites – like Australian Recipes
• Nich Food Sites – like New Orleans Cuisine
• Food Blogs
• Chef and Restaurant sites

Major food manufactures as well as food equipment companies understand that people search for recipes online. Which is why online savvy companies like Nestle and Kraft have developed and published a wide range of recipe and food content on their sites.

So with such a volume of consumers coming to food and recipes sites, it makes sense for food and food related companies to advertise online to reach these large audiences.

Recipes for 50% 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.