First Party Data reveals valuable insight into consumer behavior

Reaching target consumers, monitoring the types and numbers of people that visit a site, and which surfing habits an internet user has, is all transferred into various types of data which can be very valuable when it comes to advertising your products.

First party data is basically the data and research collected by brands themselves. First Party Data is often very valuable (and mostly confidential) to brands, giving them the knowledge about certain types of data means helps them as advertisers know the how and why to re-reach consumers or understand what prospective users might look like. By using first party data along side their advertising campaigns allows them target their advertising spend on reaching the exact target consumer.

There are endless types of first party data a brand advertiser might collect and use to re-engage with their target audience. These include but are not limited to a potential customer’s ;

• Registration Data
• Previous online shopping activity  i.e did they purchase or abandon their shopping cart
• Likelihood or intention of buying
• Gender
• Age
• Geo Location
• Time on their site
• How many times they have visited
• Number of pages viewed
• What product pages they viewed
• Browser
• Operating System

The most important fist party data to most companies is registration data. This provides the most in depth data about the person and is what is the most confidential data, hence why many companies will not share data. By knowing vital information such as this, an advertiser can focus their attentions on advertising to specific customers. The analysis of first party data is essential before using in your next advertising campaign. Without data analysis, you could be advertising to people that are unlikely to be interested in your product due to their age, gender, occupation or lifestyle. Many brands use DMPs ( data management platforms) to manage their first party data, first collecting it and then using it when media buying.

Advertisers can use First Party Data within the Gourmet Ads Marketplace

One of the advantages of using a Private Ad Exchange such as Gourmet Ads Marketplace, is the ease and ability to use your own first party data.  Gourmet Ads offers a private ad exchange where advertisers can take advantage of using the pre-arranged and fixed CPM prices for inventory.

First party data allows you to spend your money wisely and to carefully place adverts without wasting money on adverts that won’t be reaching the right consumers. First Party Data can even be used to personalize advertising creative aimed at specific consumers. This in turn is more likely for the brand to see a conversion.

Gourmet Ads believe that 2012 will be a year where advertisers everywhere will realise the phenomenal benefits of advertising using first party data. Brands that are yet to reap the benefits of using their own first party data to increase advertising sales will be able to personalise their advertising campaigns, reach various types of customers as well as target newer customers as well.

First Party 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.

Advertising Trends for 2012 from Gourmet Ads

For the past 4 years, and as the year comes to a close, I’ve looked forward to the future trying to predict what the Advertising Trends for the year ahead will be. Looking back I think for the most part I’ve predicted the advertising trends rather well. That said I’ll be the first to say that we’ve got some predictions wrong, but for the most part I think I’ve been on the money. My advertising trend predictions are simply derived from what we as a company are seeing in-market.

So here are our Advertising Trends for 2012

1. Real Time Bidding Budgets to Increase
Real Time Bidding Budgets was something I predicted last year and again it’s my number 1 advertising trend prediction for 2012. Why? Well late in 2011, Gourmet Ads launched our private ad exchange called the Gourmet Ads Marketplace. Since then we’ve had an amazing response to real time bidding and if anything we’ve started to see many more advertisers start buying media like this. As the year came to a close, we spoke to all our major media buying partners and not one of them said that budgets were going backwards. Nearly all of them said they will have many more advertising clients in 2012.

2. Media Buying with Data
Just like Real Time Bidding, we also mentioned Data in last year’s advertising trends. In 2011 the buzz term by Q2 was DMP (data management platform), now if you believe everything you read in the digital press, DMPs will be no longer around in 2012. Then there is the debate of 1st Party Data vs 3rd Party Data and I’m not going anywhere near that.

Our prediction is that digital media buying using some sort of data will grow significantly in 2012. I think it’s the sole motivation for advertisers contemplating a move to real time bidding platforms, i.e. the fact they can pair the media buy up with data and then buy the impressions they actually want at scale. Once advertisers have developed a clear use of their own 1st Party Data sets and can begin to only buy the impressions they want we will see continued growth in data.

3. Mobile Advertising to Grow
During Q3 in 2011 we started seeing questions on both the advertiser and publisher sides regarding mobile advertising. We had advertisers asking about inventory and publishers asking about demand ( which is always great). When publishers in the food space are asking our publisher team about mobile advertising because their building an App or dedicated mobile site, then 2012 will be all about mobile. We saw during 2012 a number of supermarkets launch iPhone and Android apps which have been highly successful with consumers. See Woolworths in Australia which have a great mobile app. As a company we too have invested in mobile. Our development team is currently working on the RecipeBridge Mobile site which is scheduled to be launched in January 2012. Mobile content aside, I wonder if we’ll see better quality mobile advertising from advertisers in 2012. It does seem that text ads are still the main type of creative used on mobile devices.

4. Branded Recipes
During 2011 we saw a major advertising trend from food manufactures and some supermarkets seeking to integrate their branded recipes on our network publisher sites. I would say nearly every RFP we received requested some sort of recipe integration as part of the media plan. We believe this is only the beginning for Branded Recipes. Observing this trend, Gourmet Ads developed our own platform for branded recipes on RecipeBridge.com, where we add all the recipes of a brand into the RecipeBridge site. Then when people search for a recipe such as “fondant recipe” then brands with fondant recipes will be displayed alongside other recipe sites, where consumers can then click through to the brands website for the ingredients, cooking method and presentations.
Early in 2012, Gourmet Ads will be announcing the launch of our Brand Solutions on RecipeBridge to help brands get more exposure for their branded recipes to household grocery buyer.

5. Video Advertising
Video Advertising for the digital advertising industry in 2011 was huge. If you don’t think it was you’ve been on another planet. I recall sitting @ Digiday New York in November and watching the “State of the Industry on Digital Video” report and being amazed by nearly every statistic being presented. This is why I’m adding it as an Advertising Trend in 2012.

Why the huge recent growth in Video Advertising? There are a number of answers why. It’s so very similar to buying television and advertisers (and their advertising agencies) understand how to buy TV media. Engagement rates are consistently solid (notice I didn’t mention click through rates). Creative is rather standard now. Most video advertisers are using a 15 or 30 second pre roll video together with a 300×250 Companion Ad using either VAST or VPAID formats. We’ve also seen in 2011 more non linear advertising solutions come to market.

For Gourmet Ads, Video Advertising was the fastest growing section of our business in 2011. We’ve seen huge demand from advertisers and we don’t think this will subside anytime soon. We believe that video based revenue will increase significantly for the company over the next year or so. That said, there are still lots of challenges for video. Lack of quality video inventory is one. We’ve worked hard to build a large collection of Cooking Videos on Tastydays. The second is the technical requirements needed to setup a publisher to accept video pre roll ads. We have made some great progress with our own video hosting platform for publishers, but more education is required.

6. The 300×600 Ad Size
There is something to say for big things and the 300×600 is one the largest display ad sizes available with many calling it the “half page ad unit” Not only from a creative aspect is there lots of room to get the message across, but in our testing we’ve seen engagement rates from 3 to 10 times better than regular display sizes.
Over the past 6 months we’ve slowly started to see more advertisers ask for the 300×600 size and given the great performance of the unit, we believe that in 2012 will see more advertisers using this size.

7. Vertical Ad Networks will Continue to Grow
As I had predicted last year, there was plenty of consolidation across the digital advertising ecosystem. We saw video companies acquire other video advertising companies, we saw ad networks acquire other ad networks and major web portals continue buying investment that make sense them. What we didn’t see was any acquisitions of Vertical Ad Networks in 2012.
Many in the Digital Press predicted that Vertical Ad Networks will die a slow death, which really cracks me up. Gourmet Ads which just focus on Food Advertising are very much alive and kicking. We’ve seen amazing growth again this year and are looking forward to continued growth in 2012. I’m often talking to my peers at other vertical ad networks and all report solid growth and revenues. Gourmet Ads in 2011 strengthened our inventory by investing in RecipeBridge and I know other networks have been quietly acquiring more web properties and inventory which they can call their own.
So yes, I’m predicting that Vertical Networks will continue to grow in 2012.

7. CPG Brands to Increase Budgets

Again an advertising trend we mentioned last year and the year before. We saw a number of new advertisers in the CPG space in 2011 and we’re already seen new brands at major CPGs advertising for the first time. That said we would like all CPGs to start using online. In 2011 we started to see CPGs run longer campaigns, compare to previous years where they were just concentrating on Q4, then going dark for the rest of the year.

We have two predictions as an advertising trend in 2012, is that we’re going to see smaller to mid sized companies move to online in 2012 where they can easily compete with large FMCG / CPG companies, possibly more so on a localized / geo targeted basis.

8. Contextual Advertising for Food Advertisers 

Another advertising trend we’ve seen from food advertisers in 2011 is the request to advertise on pages where recipe content is closely related or is contextually relevant. We’re predicting this will continue into 2012 as some advertisers want to only reach the exact target each and every time.

An example of contextual advertising for foods would be say a seafood company running a campaign for salmon and they only wanted to advertise on pages where salmon was being mentioned. Pages might be smoked salmon recipes or grilled salmon recipes. Now this is relatively easy for a single site to provide this type of targeting and Gourmet Ads has a few sites where this is possible. We’re working on contextually being able to target against videos with pre roll video advertising. The challenge has always been one around how much inventory is there.

Rolling in 2012, we predict that companies will use Contextual Advertising for part of their media plan, it might be in two ways. 1. They will allocate 10-20% of the media plan’s budget to contextual to ensure the plan remains relevant, then use retargeting and then general run of food. 2. They will book a 6 or 12 month media plan to “own” the term. I.e. they will own “salmon recipes” in very much like a sponsorship type investment, changing the ad creative when required.

What do you think about my Advertising Trends 2012 Predictions ?

If you’re curious to see what I wrote in previous years they can be seen here ;
Advertising Trends 2011, Advertising Trends 2010, Advertising Trends 2009

Advertising Trends 2012 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.

Online coupons are one of the fastest growing trends among consumers

The economic downturn and consumers growing awareness of the need to stretch their grocery dollar has made online coupons one of the fastest growing trends among consumers. Between 2009 and 2010, use of digital coupons rose to $1.2 billion, a 41 percent increase in just a year. While this trend shows no signs of slowing down, many companies have not taken advantage of the ways that digital coupons can bring new customers. So how can you use digital coupons to increase your business?

As newspaper ad coupons start to slow, the majority of online coupons users come from higher-earning families, for example, one recent report shows that families with an income above $100,000 annually are more than twice as likely to use online coupons. Consumers in this income bracket are the Gourmet Ads audience. So how are you attracting new customers to your brand by using online coupons?

Online coupons can be one of the fastest, most effective, and cost efficient ways to introduce a new product to the market. By offering coupons for a new product, you give customers the chance to try- and love- your product at a discounted rate, thus building brand loyalty which is the number one predictor of a successful product. Certain categories of products show higher rates of redemption of digital coupons. These include ready-to-eat cereal, yogurt, refrigerated dough, portable snacks, vegetables, baby products, soup, air/rug/fabric care, cheese, and lunch meats. If your item belongs in one of these categories, you will need to know what makes a digital coupon for these items so successful. Not only does the online coupon need to get in the hands of customers, it has to offer a significant discount to make customers want to try out a certain product

Like traditional coupons, the key to success with online coupons is getting it out to the public and into the hands of the customers who are most likely to use it. While there are a number of services on the internet that offer customers the ability to print out online coupons, these are not the only- or even the most efficient- ways to get coupons to shoppers. Gourmet Ads will develop an advertising strategy that can include running online coupons downloads on sites such as recipe websites which reach grocery buyers online.

Online coupons are one of the fastest, most effective way to launch a new product to the market

As the economy slowly recovers, coupon usage shows no signs of slowing down, and shoppers are spending more time looking for ways to save money and get a great deal on everyday purchases. Experts predict that food prices will continue to rise, giving customers more reasons to look for ways to cut their grocery budges. Technology improvements will also drive the use of digital coupons, with more customers looking for mobile applications that allow them to redeem coupons. Another important factor is the growing popularity of internet grocery shopping, which is an ideal venue for digital coupons. With so many reasons to take advantage of the digital coupon trend, now is the time to let Gourmet Ads design an advertising campaign incorporating online coupons for your brand.

Online Coupons Growing 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.

Rich Media is a great way to Market Ingredients and Recipes.

Recipes using rich media and featured online provide an excellent opportunity for smart product placement by food and kitchenware manufacturers. Imagine flash videos in a medium rectangle 300×250 island advertising space where a cook or chef prepares a recipe using your featured product or products.

The product being demonstrated could be a food ingredient, cooking utensil, cookware or kitchen appliance. This rich media advertising is then supported by branding ads in other locations on the page. People love making recipes they have seen on video and almost unconsciously choose the same brands they saw used in the video. After all, using another brand may not produce the same results and consumers want their recipe to be perfect.

Using rich media to create recipe videos has another advantage over other types of ads: it comes across as “friendly advice” rather than a blatant sales pitch and that makes potential customers more at ease and more likely to purchase your brand. Let’s face it, competition in the food market is tough and you need to take advantage of every possible angle if you want to survive. Recipes featured in rich media cooking videos offer a valuable service to customers while branding your product as the best choice of ingredients when preparing the recipe.

Another advantage of recipes using rich media is that they make a firmer impression in a customer’s mind. The customer is seeing and hearing about the product and is more likely to remember the brand used than in one-dimensional ads alone. The rich media and online ads can also be tied in with in-store displays to further solidify the branding of your food product, utensils or cookware.

Recipes videos cooked in rich media presentations are sure to leave a positive impression

Recipes videos cooked in rich media presentations are sure to leave a favourable impression on potential customers and increase your ROI for your online advertising.

Recipes using Rich Media 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.

Advertising Growers Associations attract New Consumers

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.

Advertising Growers Associations online is cost effective when budgets are limited.

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 Growers Associations with Gourmet Ads.

Advertising Growers Associations 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.

Co-Op Supermarket Advertising allows Greater Reach on Campaigns

Nearly every supermarket and grocery buying group does some sort of Co-Op Supermarket Advertising. For those that don’t know, Supermarket 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 supermarket 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 Supermarket 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.

Pooling Funds via a Co-Op increases Supermarket Advertising Budgets

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 Supermarket 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.

Supermarket Co-Op Advertising 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.

Reaching the Main Grocery Buyer has the greatest impact on sales of CPG items

If you are selling grocery products you are probably well aware that successfully, reaching the household’s Main Grocery Buyer (MGB) or otherwise referred to as the primary grocery buyer has the greatest impact on sales of CPG (consumer packaged goods) or FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) products. Sometimes, however, this task can seem easier said than done. Where can you find the main grocery buyer and how can you influence their purchase decisions?

The Main Grocery Buyer spends time online researching new dishes and recipes online.

The latest research shows that the Main Grocery Buyer spends a lot of time online and can often be found researching new dishes and recipes online. Gourmet Ads allows you to target, influence and engage with the Main Grocery Buyer while they are research dishes and recipes online by placing your ad right next to these online recipes. Recipe ads are extremely effective because the Main Grocery Buyer tends to look for recipes while determining their shopping list right before heading to the grocery store. That puts your product at the top of their list and makes it likely to be one of the first items in their shopping cart when they reach the grocery store.

The recipe ads facilitated by Gourmet Ads are highly targeted and highly effective. There is no easier or more cost effective way to put your ads right in front of the people who are directly responsible for making the purchase decisions—the Main Grocery Buyer. Having your product in the forefront of the Main Grocery Buyer’s mind right at the moment they are making the purchase decision is the surest way to get your product into their grocery cart. Getting the best ROI means getting your ads to reach your target audience and getting as many of them to purchase your product as possible. Putting your advertisements right next to the recipes that contain your product for the Main Grocery Buyer to see right before heading to the grocery store is about as highly targeted and cost effective as you can get.

Reaching the Main Grocery Buyer 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 **

10 Advertising Trends for 2009 from Gourmet Ads

Recently I sat down with Mark Pollard and during the discussion he pointed me to guest blog he did over at Talking Digital Blog called 9 trends to look out for in 2009. This is one of a few industry players who’ve written their opinions of 2009 and the trends. Make sure you check out them here.

Inspired by Mark and the team at Talking Digital Blog, I’ve written my Advertising Trends for 2009. Mine aren’t as wide reaching as the ones on Talking Digital. I’ve tried to keep them related to the space that Gourmet Ads works in (food, wine and beer advertising) as well as reducing the focus on the downturn in economy.

So here are my 10 Advertising Trends for 2009 ;

1. TV Budgets going to Online
Advertising budgets allocated for TV & Print will finally begin to be allocated to online. Ok, so everyone says this from year to year, but 2009 will be the year. This will be mainly driven by company management who will be required to show a return on investment in advertising during the economic downturn. Stupid and willy nilly advertising spends that can’t be measured will be the first thrown out the window.

2. Testing (or smarter media buying)
This is something that’s we’ve seen as a company during the 4th Quarter in 2008. Savvy media buyers are not just buying huge media buys upfront for their clients. Media buyers have been buying small campaigns of say $5000 with a series of different creative to see what best performs on a network. Once they know what creative works with a given audience, they’ll do another media buy which they know will perform as they require. 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.

3. FMCG & CPG will embrace online
FMCG & CPG companies have for a long time resisted moving their advertising online. This is because they’ve felt it’s been difficult to reach consumers. Research has shown that in economic downturns consumers tend to buy “no name” or “private label” products to save money. Companies like Kellogg’s who’ve been through a number of recessions actually increase their advertising to ensure that their brands are top of mind when consumers are in the supermarket or grocery aisles. With this in mind I think we’ll see companies companies in the food space like cereals, pastas, tinned foods etc as well as dishwasher and cleaning goods start to advertise online in 2009.

4. Companies Buying Direct
In an effort to save money, medium sized businesses will start buying their advertising directly and avoid advertising and media buying agencies. Even though the majority of Gourmet Ads advertising campaigns come from advertising agencies and will continue to be, I think during 2009 (particularly though the 3rd Quarter) we’ll begin to deal with more companies direct.

5. Advertising doing Discounts & Coupons
No brand wants to be known as a “discounter” but given the state of the economy brand advertisers will begin running advertising with discounts, offers and deals. Companies that need to track ROI will also begin using or offering online coupons for consumers to print for redemption in supermarkets and grocery stores. This wont be something that is restricted to CPG or FMCG products, we’ll see it across a range of industries.

6. Less creative more straight to the point advertising
There is a lot to be said for actually saying what the deal is with the online advertising twisting, rotating, spinning or rolling. Related to my 2nd point above about testing, I think you’ll see more advertising that just gets to the point and says the message.

7. More companies hiring Online Marketing Managers
As companies finally decided to embrace online they’ll begin to need internal experience to either work independently of agencies or work in tandem. We’ve already seen a number of out clients in the 4th Qtr hiring Online Marketing Managers or Interactive Managers to take the pressure off the marketing manger. Not only will Online Marketing Managers be responsible for media buying and planning, but they’ll be responsible for strategising and ensuring that their product is translated to online to drive brand awareness and sales.

8. More Vertical Ad Networks
Throughout the US there are Vertical Ad Networks covering nearly ever niche. During 2009 I believe there’ll be a number of Vertical Ad Networks just like the Gourmet Ads network pop up all over the world providing advertisers a smarter avenue to reach their target markets. We’ve already seen in Australia, AdTorque which is another Adify powered automotive network. I predict that travel, finance, business, IT and other niche areas of will become a focus. With this increase in Vertical Ad Networks, we’ll also see advertising agencies understand the difference between Vertical Advertising Networks and Horizontal Advertising Networks, something that some agencies battle to understand.

9. Google will begin to acquire vertical advertising networks
I don’t think I need to add any more comments here…

10. Gourmet Ads launches new verticals networks
As mentioned in our 2009 media kit, we’ll be launching three new verticals during 2009. These will in BBQ, Restaurants and Coffee.

We’d love to get your feedback on some of our 2009 Advertising Trends.

Advertising Trends for 2009 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.

Recently a prospective client said they had no budget for online advertising. I immediately thought he was trying to be misleading as this company’s advertisements appear on a number of sites on the internet. So I said to this to the company’s marketing manager that I’d seen there ads on sites on the internet and they said, we have no budget, just ROI. At the time their strategy wasn’t clear to me, but after learning and seeing it action, I now understand it backwards. Since that first conversation, I’ve heard this a number of times after talking with prospective clients and thought its worth sharing with you.

Most professionally run online stores know their conversion rates when a particular audience visits their store, ie a 5% conversion rate means that for every 100 people that visit the site, 5 actually make a purchase. Apart from conversion rates, most ecommerce managers know how many times consumers visit the online store before they purchase, how many pages they’ll look at, where they are located and how much they usually spend. Most of this intelligence can be sourced from various web analytic tools like Google Analytics or Web Trends as well as custom reports and metrics.

So after they know the kind of customer that spends, the challenge is how to find these consumers online, and then drive them to the store. Savvy advertisers will generally run a short trial campaign for say 2 – 4 weeks with a budget of say $5000 to see what kind of audience an advertiser like Gourmet Ads delivers and if they are actually buyers. Some channels drive traffic, but they don’t buy.

Once these savvy advertisers know the conversion rate, they can work out the return on investment (ROI) on the advertising costs. Once they’ve got a return on investment in mind, they’ll book ongoing advertising over multiple months, monitoring the return on investment and not the budget. As long as the sales continue these savvy advertisers purely monitor the sales and renew the advertising. The key here isn’t to get complacent; it’s essential to continually change the advertising message, branding and look and feel of the advertising as well as the deal to ensure that audiences continue to be engaged with the advertising.

Because the quality of the click in vertical advertising networks is much more qualified than horizontal networks, we can continue to drive the same levels of return on investment for advertisers over time. See a recent post titled Vertical Advertising Increases ROI.

No Budget! Just ROI 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.