Using Supermarket Transaction Data from Loyalty Card Programs

As loyalty card programs grew in popularity throughout the late 1990s, supermarkets began to realize that a by-product of loyalty programs was the collection of supermarket transaction data that described not only what customers purchased but allowed supermarkets to analyze trends in the buying habits of customers. The collection of such powerful information has created actionable data that provides supermarkets with the ability to more effectively target buyers by understanding their shopping habits. The increasing importance and prevalence of digital advertising is an ideal counterpart to the collection of supermarket transaction data, allowing them to create the most accurately targeted advertising campaigns ever, but many supermarkets haven’t taken full advantage of this information.

One way that supermarkets can use transactional data to their benefit is to use web-based technology, such as retargeting, to provide highly relevant advertising to customers. In essence, the combination of supermarket transaction data and retargeting technology allows them to create personalized advertising flyers to shoppers and potential shoppers which can be transmitted through a number of sites that shoppers are already visiting. Advertising with the Gourmet Ads network can help your supermarket accomplish exactly this – when you provide us with advertising information, we match it to what our customers are looking for and the things we know about our audience so that we can deliver targeted advertising right to the customers you have been aiming for.

Supermarket Transaction data can also be used to create specific shopper incentive programs that are aimed at a targeted group.  For example, one store that analyzed anonymous shopping habits of its consumers found that men who bought diapers on a certain day usually also purchased alcohol.  This seemingly strange connection is something that the marketing department may have never dreamed of, but the information lead to a marketing plan that reached out to dads in a new way. The transactional data you use can be combined with advertising on the Gourmet Ads network to deliver promotions, loss leaders, special sales, and coupons to shoppers who are most likely to be interested in these items.

Supermarket transaction data is a powerful tool for targeted advertising

Transactional data can be collected in order to create customer profiles which are then used to market product to so-called look alike customers. For example, if your supermarket transaction data tells you that shoppers who purchase a particular item are highly likely to purchase another item at the same time, Gourmet Ads can use that information to target customers who look at the first item online with advertisements that offer the second item.

Targeted advertising with Gourmet Ads isn’t just for large scale retailers with locations across the country. Using anonymous data submitted by users as they surf online, Gourmet Ads can display your advertising right to customers in your local area.

The result of combining your collected transactional data with Gourmet Ads wide range of digital advertising tools is relevant, personalized marketing to your customers. The goal of targeted marketing is to make the most of every ad dollar that you spend, and supermarket transaction data allows Gourmet Ads to come up with a more complete picture of your shopper and focus advertising efforts on the customers who are most likely to visit your store.

Supermarket Transaction Data 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.

Cookies are used by Online Retailers for all types of Tracking

Online consumers have become increasingly smart and increasingly picky about the products they research and buy online. Most customers will spend a significant amount of time researching products before they make a purchase, and many customers are open to using different websites to make their purchases if they see a better deal. The challenge for retailers is how to target their advertising to the customers who are most likely to make purchases from that retailer. That’s where our technology comes in – by using behavioral targeting and retargeting to put your site in front of the consumers who are most likely to buy.

Behavioral targeting can be used in numerous ways to give visitors to any site a personalized and relevant experience. We use cookies as a way to collect information about users without requiring the user to input information and without accessing any private information. Cookies are used by all kinds of websites for many reasons- such as tracking session information, maintaining site preferences, and keeping items in online shopping carts. Information contained in cookies does not identify the individual user, so you can be sure that your customer’s privacy is maintained, an important consideration for many users.

Imagine being able to release a television ad that was only seen by people wanting to by your product, right when they wanted to buy it. That is exactly the concept of behavioral targeting. When a customer visits your website, information about the things they have been shopping for is automatically collected in the form of cookies. That information is used to help load advertisements that relate to those items, turning a browser into a buyer by giving them the information they are looking for when they are looking for it. There are a number of ways that we can get your message in front of the right customers using behavioral targeting. For example, say that a potential customer visits the manufacturer’s site for a particular brand of small kitchen appliance. Gourmet Ads can track this visit, and then display an advertisement featuring that product on your website. Thus increasing the likelihood the consumer will purchase the product.

The problem with most traditional methods of advertising (say television or radio) is that they are essentially a guessing game, throwing your ad in front of visitors and hoping that they will connect the dots offline. Using technologies like behavioral targeted (also retargeting and sequential advertising) is the best way of making your advertising dollars work. Essentially, you are improving the odds that the people who see your advertisement are interested in buying your product. Behavioral targeting can be used not only to display certain advertisements at certain times, but also to offer specials and savings to customers who are likely to take advantage of those offers. For example, if a customer is searching through several sites looking for the best deal on a new mixer, offering free shipping or pointing out your rebate offer on new mixers can provide a significant benefit to your customer as well as increasing sales.

Cookies are the backbone of Behavioral Targeting and Retargeting

The combination of behavioral targeting and an ad campaign designed to turn shoppers into buyers can make your advertising dollars go farther. Gourmet Ads helps retailers market to the right customers at the right time by designing ad campaigns designed to make the shopping experience as personalized as possible. Cookies are the backbone of Behavioral Targeting and Retargeting.

Cookies and Online Retailers 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.

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 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.

Yearlong Campaign 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.

** Updated click to read – > Advertising Trends 2012 **

Last year we wrote a blog called 2009 Advertising Trends where we looked gave a somewhat forecast of what we thought the trends would be. Some things we got right, others we didn’t.  Certainly 2009 for most advertising companies is a year they’d rather put behind them.

So looking forward into next year, we thought we should but together a list again, this time with our 2010 Advertising Trends we think will happen in 2010. Some are from foundations of things that we’ve seen in mid to late 2009, others are purely speculative.

Any way we’d like to get your thoughts and comments on our 2010 Advertising Trends predictions. Because its 2010 we thought 10 would be a good number to start with.

Our 2010 Advertising Trends

1. Media Buying via Vertical Ad Networks
We saw during 2009 a great deal of media buyers and media planners starting to include more vertical advertising networks into their client media plans. There is no question that Vertical Ad networks are an efficient means to reach niche audiences. So we believe that this trend will continue into 2010 and beyond. The key for all vertical ad networks (including us here at Gourmet Ads) is to ensure that we continue to deliver value for money on premium sites, whilst ensuring we provide quality audiences, reach and creative execution for all media buys.

2. Increased Online Media Spending
We’ve already seeing an increase in the budgets for 2010 RFP’s during Q4 in 2009. Companies and their advertising agencies that were only doing short term media buying are already asking for 12 month plans for 2010. We believe that as companies continue to reduce their TV, Radio and Print budgets they’ll be seeking to reach consumers online where the metrics can be measured. We’ve even heard from food companies that previously didn’t have an online strategy hiring digital teams and/or digital agencies.

3. Pre Roll Video
During 2009 we had a lot of agency folks indicate they were testing various video formats for clients. Some tested in-unit video, standalone video, pre roll, mid roll, post roll and video on interstitials. Agencies are now indicating that what is working for them is pre roll video and preferably with a companion ad. So we expect during 2010 that we’ll see increased demand for pre roll video inventory.

4.Increased spending by FMCG & CPG
This was a key advertising trend prediction last year and we’ve started to see this happen. Although some campaigns I question the messaging and creative, but overall many of the large FMCG / CPG companies are now actively spending online and consistently from month to month. We’re  predicting we’ll see a raft of small to mid sized companies move to online in 2010 where they can easily compete with large FMCG / CPG companies, possibly on a localised / geo targeted basis.

5. Beyond the Banner / Non IAB Sizes
Throughout 2009 the buzz word on nearly every RFP was “Beyond the Banner” and we don’t think this will change as we head into 2010. We believe that advertisers will be asking for more Non IAB units as part of campaigns from simple logos to standalone rich media. So what kind of Beyond the Banner / Non IAB Sizes solutions excite advertisers? Try changeable backgrounds, recipes integrations, brand integrations and widgets to name a few. Additionally we’ll see these booked for longer periods such as 12 months or at least by the quarter.

6. Behavioral Targeting & Retargeting
If you’re at Adtech New York recently you would have noticed the vast amount of companies offering both Behavioral Targeting and Retargeting solutions. I even heard of one company that said vertical networks don’t have to have recruit publishers just gain access to pixels on people’s computers! We’re running more and more long term campaigns which include Behavioral Targeting of some sort. They are great for ecommerce sites and anywhere where conversions are critical.  and we expect this advertising trend to continue well into 2010 and beyond.

7. CPM rates increase
We’re already seeing CPM rates increase in Q3 and Q4 2009. CPM rates for the most part are back at sensible levels compared to early 2009 when they were extremely under valued. Major publisher had to significantly discount. Although some markets are taking longer to recover than others, CPM rates across the globe are certainly increasing or are stable.

8. Interstitial Advertising
We touched on this above under Beyond the Banner / Non IAB Sizes. As brands are looking for higher visibility in more non IAB units, Interstitials are a great way to deliver them and we believe that during 2010 more advertisers will be requesting them. They’ve been the secret for many direct response advertisers for sometime because of their high click through rates as well as engagement rates. Its not always inbound interstitials, some of our publishers who provide gateway content are offering outbound interstitials.  Finally, don’t just expect to see static or rich media on Interstitials. We expect to see more 10 and 15 second video being used on Interstitials as advertisers look at more high profile avenues to engage with audiences.

9. More Coupon based Campaigns
Given the economic climate of 2009 we saw a great deal of brand campaigns which include some sort of discount coupon. For the most part these Coupon based campaigns have performed extremely well and we expect this advertising trend to continue in 2010. The majority of coupon campaigns have been run by large food companies, however we believe that in 2010 we’ll see smaller food companies and even wine companies using these sort of tactics to drive sales. Expect to see even more and more ecommerce sites using this tactic to drive sales.

10. Gourmet Ads will be the largest Food Network globally
Obviously as I’m in the driving seat, I can say with confidence that Gourmet Ads will continue to grow in our key markets of America, UK, Canada and Australia. Apart from this we’ll also start to see other markets emerge in Europe and Asia. We’ll continue to recruit quality publishers with fantastic audiences ensuring that campaigns perform.

We’d love to get your feedback on some of our 2010 Advertising Trends. So feel free to leave a comment.

2010 Advertising Trends 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.

Lots of Evidence to show that Display Ads initiate Search Queries.

Last week one of our clients running a food advertising campaign with regular display advertising units commented to me that they were seeing a significant jump in the website reports indicating that people were searching the messaging used in the creative of their latest online advertising campaign. The client was obviously pleasantly shocked that this was happening and subsequently asked us to provide a written response their next management meeting that;

1. Provide insight to why occurs
2. How they can leverage off this immediately and gain more traffic to their landing page /website
3. Suggest ideas for their next campaign and how it can be trafficked.

What has happened to our clients is simply nothing but brand advertising. The creative for this campaign has been successful in capturing our audience’s attention, then burning the messaging into their mind for future recall.

When preparing the report for our client (which I must point out doesn’t use an advertising agency) I did some searches on the net and found this article titled “50 Percent of Internet Users Perform Searches in Response to Online Ads”.

The article is based on research which found that Internet users initially respond to online display advertising as follows;

• 31 percent respond by directly clicking on an ad;
• 27 percent respond by searching for the product, brand or company by conducting a search on a search engine;
• 21 percent respond by typing the company Web address into their browsers and directly navigating to the Web site; and
• 9 percent respond by investigating the product, brand or company through social media venues.

Are you running Display Ads to drive brand awareness ?

What I liked about the article was the suggestions that marketers can do to take action. With action points in mind, this is what we suggested for our client;

1. For every advertising campaign create a page or blog which could be titled the same as the messaging in the advertising creative. Be sure to include the various creative on the page together with text about the creative, what the campaign is about. Make sure you provide clear and easy to find links to the landing page which is the same or mirrored for the display campaign.
2. With nearly 25% of internet users who respond to online display advertising do so by typing the company or brand name, make sure your company and brand ranks number in all the popular search engines. For people that won’t search for the messaging, this is the 2^nd best way of leveraging off your display advertising.
3. If you undertake search engine marketing, then ensure that the messaging used in the display campaign is also run in your search campaigns. Once again maximizing the opportunity for engagement.
4. Setup social media profiles on all the popular platforms. This is once again a great place to mention the advertising messaging, driving consumers back to your site.
5. Use online reputation management to identify when your company name or brand has been mentioned on a website or in social media. Consumers may even mention your ad campaign in social media. This is a great opportunity to engage with your consumer.

Display Ads Trigger Search 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.

Have you developed a Retargeting Strategy for your Brand’s Website ?

We recently wrote a blog on Search Retargeting and how you use the search engines to find relevant users for your products then using display advertising via Retargeting them with highly related advertising. Since the Search Retargeting blog, we’ve had a great deal of enquiry asking about developing a client’s Retargeting Strategy to help generate a high return on investment for your online campaigns.

If you’re selling products online, the most important thing is for you to develop some sort of Retargeting Strategy. The sooner you start serving cookies, the sooner you can start retargeting and generating sales.

So first off what is retargeting?
Retargeting is tactic used by online advertisers who target previous website visitors and serve them an advertisement encouraging them to revisit the site and complete a purchase. With a developed Retargeting Strategy, the advertisements which get served could be via a roadblock or sequential targeting and can offer the user a range of advertising messages in order to complete the sale. This is done by dropping a cookie on the user’s machine depending on behaviour targeting criteria which we’ll go into detail further.

Why would I want to use retargeting?
There is no doubt that consumers do a great deal of research online before making a purchase and for products with long purchasing cycles retargeting is a strategy to keep your brand or website top of mind with your target audience. Often when a user starts off researching a product to buy they will visit a wide range of sites looking for information on the product. At this time if you drop a cookie with some information on their behavior you can target this later in the purchasing cycle.

Who do you target?
There are few options to consider.

1. Everyone – you should begin immediately gathering data on who visits your site, particularly if you’re a smaller or niche ecommerce site. You can target these users with branding campaigns in the future.
2. People who look at particular products. I’d personally mark any user that looks at a high margin product. It’s no good marking low margin products because you’ll eliminate the margin with the advertising cost. Just stick to high margin products. These sorts of people can be targeted with product specific advertising, drawing them back to the site in the future.
3. People that don’t complete the shopping cart. These types of people are obviously ready to buy, but there was something in the way that stopped the transaction. It’s usually either comes down to price or shipping costs. If you can eliminate an obstacle and bring people back to complete their shopping cart with 20% off your order if you buy today or free shipping then your conversion rate increases and you get the sale.
4. People that signup for a member or newsletter but don’t purchase. They are obviously interested in your products, but are not ready to buy. Could these people benefit from offering them a free catalogue or a discount coupon in order to buy?

What are some of the offers or messaging I could retarget my audience with?
Anything really, the ideas are endless. The key is running different retargeting creative which appeals to that audience demographic. Some ideas on retargeting campaigns could include;

• 24 hour sale (everything reduced)
• Discount Code or Coupon Code
• Specific discount on a particular product
• Become a member and get a catalogue or white paper
• Signup to the Newsletter

Where would the Retargeting Campaign run?
The campaign would be run back in the Gourmet Ads network traffic pool. Our systems will start locating your retargeting cookies the moment they leave your site. So if a user has had a cookie dropped on your site, then visits a site within our network, they’ll see retargeting campaigns straight away.

Re-Reach your Audience with a defined Retargeting Strategy

With a proper retargeting strategy, you can expose that consumer to specific ads as they surf and shop outside the walls of your site. For products with a longer purchase cycle, a Retargeting Strategy can leverage Sequential Advertising to reinforce your message as the consumer goes through the research and consideration process prior to completing a purchase.

Retargeting Strategy 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.