From Magazine to Online
December 5, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
Earlier this year, I visited Gary Vaynerchuk host of Wine Library TV in New Jersey and we recorded a video about Australian Wines – see our video here. Since then I regularly watch his videos and today at www.garyvaynerchuk.com (his other video site) I stumbled upon a video where Gary is discussing the recent demise of Gourmet Magazine.
Gary asks the question why companies are advertising on magazines when the audience has not transitioned to online. He asks where they are going to advertise now ? This video by Gary is extremely relevant to our audience which why I felt it was important to share with you.
Here at Gourmet Ads we can not only provide reach into food blogs and online food communities but most importantly on recipe websites where the household grocery buyer spends time online.
If you previously had budget for magazine spending but don’t know where to put it, contact us and we’ll develop a media plan which will give you a far better return on investment than print.
What is a mid-tail publisher site?
May 20, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
A while ago we talked about Mid Tail Advertising and we specifically talked about the audience makeup and why it is important to reach these highly engaged audiences. The Mid Tail Advertising blog has stayed in the top ten blogs since we published it.
However the team at Gourmet Ads are still frequently asked by advertisers and advertising agencies, what is a mid-tail publisher site? With that in mind I thought we’d discuss that in detail and delve a little deeper and talk about what we look for when searching for sites to join the network.
So what’s a Mid-tail publisher ? It’s a premium niche site which produces great content. So in the food space think of food blogs, food video sites, niche recipe websites and even web 2.0 applications like a recipe application for your iPhone. Some of the food sites in Gourmet Ads network are just about a particular topic like baking or cuisine like Mexican. They have dedicated and active audiences which participate in the conversation.
Many sites in the Mid-tail that Gourmet Ads represent have a cult like following with audiences visiting regularly throughout the month to read new content or participate. Some even attract users multiple times per day and bring them back by using site features such as RSS to deliver new content throughout the day.
So what does Gourmet Ads look for in Mid-tail publisher? Well from our perspective, a mid-tail publisher site is assessed from 4 separate directions, these being; Branding, Audience, Traffic and Content.
Branding
Does the website have a brand? Is it recognizable? Is there are personality behind the brand? Does it ad value to the entire Gourmet Ads network? Well it continue to grow?
Audience
It’s important that the sites which are part of network have a consistent audience to the rest of our network. We typically reach Women aged 27 -55 years old and are considered the main household grocery buyer. Does this audience fit our overall audience makeup?
Traffic
Using a variety of tools we look at metrics from Google PageRank to Alexa, through to Quantcast and even the website itself to identify possible traffic volumes. We look for sites that are doing between page views between 50k to 10 million pages per month. However if the website or blog is quality they need to be doing just 5k in pages a month.
Content
Is the site producing quality content? Is it original and unique? Would our clients like to advertise beside the content? Other things we look for is Email Newsletter as well as a strong RSS audience (ie Feed Burner Metrics).
The advantages of advertising on a Mid-tail publisher site:
- Highly engaged audiences
- Sites are frequently visited
- Many sites have a cult like following
- Inexpensive CPM rates compared to large portals
- Audiences range from 50k to 10 million pages per month
So if you looking at running an advertising campaign and would like to include Mid-tail sites in the media plan, contact Gourmet Ads and we’ll develop a customised digital media plan for your consideration. Start by downloading the Gourmet Ads Media Kit or Request a Proposal from us.
Campaign Optimization
May 2, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
The Gourmet Ads network advertising server (Adify) consistently through out the campaign auto optimizes the ad serving ensuring sites which are best performing for a campaign receive a higher percentage of ads compared to sites that are not performing as well. Depending on the campaign this can sometimes not be enough for advertisers to see results.
Over and above our auto optimization, Gourmet Ads can run weekly manual campaign optimization, removing ad units which are poorly performing, thus improving the overall performance of the campaign increasing the return on investment. Each site and advertising campaign is different. On occasions ads located within content outperforms ads which are at the top of the page. Sometimes we’ll remove ads which are not performing and shift the budget to the creative that does work.
There isn’t a set formula for what works and what doesn’t, as such we’ll work hard to make sure your campaign performs. Some of the manual optimization tasks we undertake include;
- Reduce the verticals – instead of Run of Network change to just Food Vertical
- Removing ad units on sites which have a low click through rate (CTR)
- Remove ad creative which has low click through rate (CTR)
- Implement impressions capping say 5/24 or 3/24
- Implement further geo-targeting
- Implement browser based or connection filters
- Suggest changing landing pages, remove fields
For more information about running your next advertising campaign with Gourmet Ads, download our media kit or request a proposal.
Removing Websites
March 18, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
With campaign performance and return on investment high on our focus for advertisers, we’ve today removed two publishers (a blog and a website) that just haven’t been performing for our advertisers. It might sound peculiar for an advertising network to remove sites, but we felt it was in the best interest for all our advertisers.
It isn’t unusual for Gourmet Ads to remove sites from a campaign because they are not performing. In fact that’s the way we optimize campaigns by removing either an ad unit from a campaign or a publisher from a campaign. However this is the first time we’ve decided to systematically remove publishers from the Gourmet Ads network.
In the current economic climate, many advertisers are now looking for a combination of both branding and performance campaigns. With this in mind, it’s not only important for us to provide a relevant vertical in the food or wine space, but a platform that is geared for return on investment.
If you’d like to explore some of our advertising options, download the Gourmet Ads Media Kit or Request a Proposal from us.
Mid-Tail Advertising
March 17, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · 1 Comment
Take a quick think of where you visit on the Internet these days. Sure you visit Top 100 sites like CNN, ESPN and MSN but apart from those where else do you visit?
If you’re like most other people you’ll spend the majority of your time online on niche content sites and blogs. Why? Because this is where a great deal of content you’re interested in is being published these days. Its not in the large portal like sites, and it’s generally created by real people and not corporations. Online advertisers have started referring to these sorts of sites as the Mid-tail.
So what’s the Mid-tail of the Internet? It’s a collection of premium niche sites which produce great content and typically have between 50k to 10 million pages per month. So in the food space think of food blogs, food video sites, niche recipe websites and even web 2.0 applications like a recipe application for your iPhone. Some of the food sites in Gourmet Ads network are just about a particular topic like baking or cuisine like Mexican. They have dedicated and active audiences which participate in the conversation.
Many sites in the Mid-tail that Gourmet Ads represent have a cult like following with audiences visiting regularly throughout the month to read new content or participate. Some even attract users multiple times per day and bring them back by using site features such as RSS to deliver new content throughout the day.
Mid-tail Advertising is important for any advertising campaign because it brings your message to a wider audience than just advertising a top 100 site. Mid-tail sites deliver valuable audiences, and it’s these audiences which are generally much more engaged than those on major sites. What’s more they are more active and are often looking for the next big thing in their space. As more and more internet users are moving away from the portals and large top 100 sites, Mid-tail sites will be crucial for advertisers to include in their media plans.
From a financial perspective, advertising in the mid tail is often less expensive than advertising on a major site, and when running a campaign with Gourmet Ads, you can choose the sites and even ad placements. By doing hand selected ad placements your click though through and return on investment will be increased.
The advantages of Mid-tail Advertising are;
- Highly engaged audiences
- Sites are frequently visited
- Many sites have a cult like following
- Inexpensive CPM rates compared to large portals
- Audiences range from 50k to 10 million pages per month
So if you looking at running an advertising campaign and would like to include Mid-tail sites in the media plan, contact Gourmet Ads and we’ll develop a customised digital media plan for your consideration. Start by downloading the Gourmet Ads Media Kit or Request a Proposal from us.
Advertising Cookbooks
March 5, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
Like most book publishers, cookbook publishers have seen a decline in sales over the past few years. As margins in book publishing have slipped, so have the budgets for marketing and publicity. To combat these reduced budgets, cookbook publishers have sought strategies to create hype when launching a cookbook. This is why we’ve recently begun to see publishers advertise new cookbooks online.
The key to advertising cookbooks online is to quickly create hype around the cookbook release and sell as many copies as fast as possible. So what’s the strategy to Advertising Cookbooks online?
As online retailers such as Amazon and Barnes and Noble begin to offer pre-release sales, a soft campaign should be launched on relevant and related sites. At this stage the advertising campaign should only serve just a few ad impressions per user per day. The key initially is to create general awareness and sales in the weeks to the lead up of the release.
Two or three days prior to the release of the cookbook, a more intense branding campaign should be commenced, possibly with different advertising creative. The ideal creative at this stage should be rich media with video interviews of the cookbook author or even just imagery of the recipes. Its about gaining attention and engagement with consumers.
Then the day before the cookbook is released, roadblock advertising should be undertaken, coupled with strategically placed Over the Page Advertising to get attention. This sort of intense advertising activity will generate a great deal of interest and sales, providing a quick return on investment for the publisher and hopefully a 2nd reprint of the cookbook. Remember it isn’t just about generating online sales, some consumers will still buy the book in a typical bookstore. The digital advertising is about getting the cookbook title and cover out there to an audience of consumers.
Sounds a lot of activity for a cookbook? Well not really. Compare this to taking outdoor, newspaper and magazine advertising and you’ll be surprised that cookbook advertising online is much more cost effective compared to other mediums. Remember the strategy hasn’t been to promote the cookbook to everyone. The advertising has been highly targeted at possible consumers and in this case, regular viewers of food websites and food blogs.
Online Advertising through a channel such as Gourmet Ads is ideal for any cookbook or cooking magazine release. So, if you’re a publishing executive and you’re currently charged with developing a publicity and media plan for a cookbook release, request a proposal from the team at Gourmet Ads.
Search Retargeting
February 23, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
For many companies their entire online advertising strategy relates to search. They purchase related keywords, phrases, branded text and competitor names in the search engines on a pay per click model or PPC. For some, the pay per click search advertising model works very effectively, but for others companies where the click of a consumer doesn’t convert it can be very expensive running lead generation or direct response campaigns on Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, Microsoft Advertising or any other pay per click network. For those that fit the later, Search Retargeting with display advertising is a strategy which will help reduce some of the churn and increase conversation rates.
Search retargeting is a behavioral targeting technique where a user who searches and clicks on your text ad is taken to your landing page. At this time, using a cookie we record the search term and any related information needed on the user’s machine, ie such as the campaign or category. Then when that user hits a site within the Gourmet Ads network we serve relevant display ads to a user based on the search query and behaviour made earlier on the landing page.
We can even go one step further. For those consumers that go deeper in the transaction and don’t complete it we can server a separate cookie indicating this. So if they save their shopping cart and don’t complete, we could for 30 days target them to return to the site and complete the transaction at a given discount. So for say the first 7 days we could offer 5% off through to 20 days offer 25% discount to encourage them to return. You might even want to run a campaign about a product they added to their cart. The ideas are endless. Think of search retargeting as the ability to continue to talk with your target market after they initially left your landing page or ecommerce site.
Because you’ve already established a relationship with the consumer and they are pre-qualified, the conversion rates are much higher than simply running a display advertising campaign. The key however to running a search retargeting campaign is going wide with as much inventory as you possibly can. By running a search retargeting campaign with Gourmet Ads we not only can provide our inventory, we can also back onto the inventory with our media and ad serving partner Adify to extend the reach of your campaign. This is an essential part of any search retargeting campaign.
Sure the CPM rate will be slightly higher compared to a regular display campaign, but because you already have a relationship with the consumer and they are pre-qualified the benefits of conversion out way the slight cost difference. Search retargeting can be a great strategy to undertake and for any company that solely relies on search marketing and is a risk free way to continue the conversation with your consumer or target market.
Search retargeting keeps consumers engaged with more personalized, relevant advertising experiences, leading to higher click-through rates and conversions. To learn more about search retargeting, contact us or request a proposal for a campaign.
Supermarket Co-Op Advertising
February 10, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
Nearly every supermarket and grocery buying group does some sort of Co-Op Advertising. For those that don’t know, Co-Op Advertising is when a number of related companies contribute to an advertising campaign by pooling all of their budgets. Usually co-ordinated by the supermarket or grocery retailer, each supplier agrees to pay an agreed amount to be included in the advertising campaign. The concept is that as a Co-Op they will have far greater reach and response, then if they had to advertise themselves.
Co-Op Advertising creates a win-win scenario for all parties. All the supplying businesses win because and professional advertising campaign and the supplier or manufacturer gets additional branding. Particularly in the USA, Co-Op Advertising is already being used to fund online advertising campaigns. Even the largest supermarket chains are using online to not only promote their store but well known brands they carry. We’ve seen this on the wine and beer side as well as advertising for grocery lines in the consumer packages goods space.
Vertical advertising through Gourmet Ads is a great way to maximize the potential of co-op advertising because it offers such a great return on investment opposed to other mediums. With the current state of the economy businesses needs to take advantage of any co-op advertising that is available to them and then use those advertising dollars in the most cost-effective way that will get as many consumers through their doors as possible.
If you are incontrol of Co-Op Advertising campaign, then contact Gourmet Ads for proposal.
Test Advertising Campaigns
January 8, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
From year to year many companies undertake the same advertising activities, with many reluctant to try new things. However, given the current economic cloud over the head of many companies, a great deal are seeking cheaper advertising avenues in order to save money, reach new consumers and continue to build brand awareness.
A trend which we started to see during the 4th Quarter in 2008 and already this year is running test advertising campaigns to see how the Gourmet Ads platform performs. Some media buyers are not just buying huge media buys upfront for their clients. Instead some are doing $1500, $3000 or $5000 test advertising campaigns over shorter periods like 5 or 7 days in length.
Media buyers have also been using a series of different advertising creative to see what best performs. Once they know what advertising creative works with the audience, they go ahead and buy the advertising campaign with confidence they know how the media buy will perform.
I think given the economic situation we’ll see more testing campaigns during 2009, especially for companies that are advertising online during 2009 for the first time.
If you’d like to run a test advertising campaign on Gourmet Ads, get started by downloading our Media Kit. Then once you’ve worked out the audience campaign targeting options you’d like to reach, we can work with you to develop your test advertising campaign.
Advertising Growers Associations
January 6, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
Growers associations provide a great way for growers of produce like nuts, corn, grapes or sugar to come together and pool resources to attract new consumers for their products. There’s growers associations for nearly everything that’s grown, for example; corn growers, apple growers, sugar growers, wheat growers, strawberry growers, potato growers, blueberry growers and cranberry growers associations to name just a few.
Unfortunately, even with an association, money is a limited resource and must be spent wisely. Advertising online is ideal for growers associations because it allows the advertiser to reach a highly targeted audience with their message which means their advertising dollar goes further.
Television ads are expensive and may not necessarily reach the desired audience, but online advertising can be tailored to reach the consumers most likely to purchase your product. Advertising for your growers association online with Gourmet Ads allow you to target foodies and those looking for recipes online. These are the consumers who really love food and are always looking for new experiences and tastes when it comes to food. Foodies enjoy researching and preparing new recipes that they find online and your advertising can be placed conveniently next to these recipes to entice them with your offerings.
A growers association’s budget is always a little tight, but in these tough economic times it can be squeezed even tighter. Advertising is a necessity to keep your product in the forefront of the consumers mind when they reach the grocery store, but you don’t want to spend more than is necessary to accomplish this goal. It could be the difference between consumers buying frozen products or fresh produce.
Online advertising with Gourmet Ads is probably the most cost effective way to advertise for growers associations. Online advertising directly to your target audience with recipe ads allows you to reach as many consumers as is possible at a far more reasonable cost than most other forms of advertising. As your growers association searches for ways to spend less while reaching more consumers with your advertising message, you will definitely want to consider advertising with Gourmet Ads.
