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.

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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.

Where do consumers find New Recipe Ideas

The search for new recipe ideas that will feed a family is a constant battle for many at home cooks. Online surveys have found that there is a dedicated group of such people that look for new recipes, new products, and new ways to cook foods using a number of online sources. Studies found that this group, which is comprised primarily of people who are the primary grocery purchasers and cooks in the home, are often interested in foods and products that offer health benefits, are cost effective, and can be prepared in a reasonably fast manner. These internet users are the very audience that food advertisers are targeting, and by understanding what customers are looking for, advertisers can create marketing plans that target these needs.

The primary way that food producers and retailers can take advantage of home cooks’ search for new recipe ideas is by offering them recipes directly within advertising. While the most important tool for providing these internet users with new recipes is the internet, marketing strategies that provide new recipe ideas through in-store advertising displays, by traditional mail, or other media are also effective. For internet users, shoppers report that they are most likely to click on advertisements that offer either a coupon for a specific item or a recipe or recipes that they are interested in. Convincing a website visitor to click on a link that brings them to a food producer’s website can be a challenge, so understanding that customers are more likely to click on links that offer recipe ideas is a great way to improve the chances that a customer will visit a website.

Another way that food industry manufacturers can take advantage of this knowledge is by including a website address that offers new recipe ideas in their other advertising. This can include television or radio advertisements that direct customers to a website that offers product coupons and recipes, or adding the website address to coupons, printed ads, and in-store displays or even product packaging. As consumers are increasingly drawn to search for new recipe ideas online, making sure your customers know that you offer this information is vital.

Are you developing New Recipe Ideas for Consumers ?

The difficulty of getting consumers to read emails from manufacturers is well known. Many customers simply delete emails without reading them, even after they have signed up to receive those same emails. However, by including new recipe ideas in the email, consumers are more likely to open and read the email. Combining recipe ideas with information about new products or specials is a good way to get shoppers interested in finding out more about a product.

As manufacturers learn about the shopping, cooking, and meal preparation habits of consumers, they can target the needs of their customers. The search for new recipe ideas is an important part of the shopping process, and by providing recipes that include your products, you will be able to attract and retain more shoppers. When you design your next marketing campaign, consider including recipe ideas that will help consumers prepare foods that are nutritious and easy to create.

Home Cooks Want New Recipe Ideas 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.

Influence Grocery Buyers with Branded Recipes

For brands looking to influence grocery buyers online, there are two real options.

• The first is the spray and pray method, derived from a military term for not aiming, but firing in the general direction. The best illustration of this is where brands book say the home page of a portal for a day. Apart from reaching just the household grocery buyer, you reach the father, son, daughter, grand father, social gamer, automotive enthusiast and technophile. Not really the best form of efficiently if you’re trying to reach the grocery buyer
• The second method is to work with a media company, such as Gourmet Ads who not only understands how to reach the grocery buyer online, but specializes in reaching the grocery buyer online. When you start targeting a niche like the grocery buyer, sure the reach isn’t anywhere near as huge, but the upside is the spend is less and the media is much more efficient than reaching everyone on the internet.

Why do we know how to reach the grocery buyer online? Easy. Over the past few years we’ve developed a vast community of recipes sites and food blogs featuring recipes, and we’ve worked hard to ensure that our ads run close or nearby recipes online. We even work with recipe search engines. This is where meal decisions are made and grocery shopping lists are developed.

We reach Grocery Buyers via a vast community of Recipes Site and Food Blogs

Because reaching grocery buyers online is all we do their isn’t any deviation from the focus. Sure we have a strong female demographic, but we don’t have lifestyle sites, beauty sites or gossip, we only do food and more specially recipes online. This is great if you’re marketing food products with the aim of increasing sales.

Recipes Recipes 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.

Brands should harness the value of User Generated Recipes

Some advertisers and their media buyers don’t like to run their advertising on websites which feature user generated content. This is because their advertising could appear next to something inappropriate like adult content or cats running around the house. I totally understand why some companies take that stance. However, User Generated Recipe sites are very different to regular user generated content and in now ways should be included within classification of general “User Generated” content.

For those that don’t know, user generated recipe websites are where the community of thousands of recipe authors contribute to the site instead of just a few authors. Nearly every user generated recipe sites have a recipe structure to follow and they require an image for every recipe. Because the community is so varied with cultures and cooking experience, the website ends up featuring a vast amount of unique content that cant be found else where. Over time recipe authors who create great recipes that people enjoy attract a cult following. Additionally because there isn’t any editorial agenda’s at play the site grows organically and features all types of great recipes.

Gourmet Ads now represents a number of User Generated Recipes sites.

So why should you be running advertising on a User Generated Recipes site?

• Large dedicated audiences
• High page impressions per user
• Continually growing with new recipes all the time
• Strong sense of community between readers and recipe authors
• Conversation between recipe authors
• Readers can rate recipes

So what advertisers can benefit from advertising on User Generated Recipe sites? Well any advertiser that wants to reach the main household grocery buyer. The person who’s looking at recipes online is also more than likely to be the same person who purchases the groceries for the household. Across the globe a number of companies including the multi national food company Unilever have developed their own user generated recipes sites.

User Generated 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 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.

Is your Brand Advertising on Foods Blogs

For the past few years, many food companies have been advertising on large recipe portals or recipe websites. Advertising with Gourmet Ads provides the ability to place your advertising on Food Blogs and Recipe websites. This is probably the best way to reach a truly targeted audience and certainly one of the most cost-effective ways to increase your sales.

Advertising on Foods Blogs hosts several other notable advantages over other advertising mediums, as well. For one thing, it is really easy to get your ad campaign started. You don’t have to hire expensive directors and actors or pay outrageous fees for photography (of course, you can if you want to). When you consider how long a customer is exposed to your Advertising on Foods Blogs as opposed to buying a 30 or 60 second spot on radio or TV, the cost is unbelievably inexpensive.

Food blogs tend to attract people who are really interested in cooking, we some times call them “Foodies”. Generally speaking this tends to be a highly targeted audience of people who are likely to purchase your food related product. Food Bloggers tend to be on the cutting edge and influential in marketing new food products and often lead trends, so these are the people you want to market new products and ideas to. Not to mention that if they like your product you are going to end up with some extra free advertising because they are highly likely to mention their experience with your product in their blog. Its the ultimate freebie for a food brand.

Getting your product advertised on food blogs also elevates your product’s image. Branding is everything when it comes to marketing food products and being viewed on a food blog does a lot more for your product’s image than a newspaper ad ever could. And since a blog reader is exposed to your ad for a longer period of time than a TV or radio ad, they are more likely to recognize your brand when they see it on a shelf full of competitors.

Advertising on Foods Blogs is Cost Effective and Ideal for a Product Launch

As Gourmet Ads represent some of the world’s best food blogs we can quickly and cost effectively launch your food product on a series of food blogs creating brand awareness and more importantly sales.

Advertising on Foods Blogs 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.