The term “Vertical Ad Network” is used in the media a lot, so what is it ?

We thought today we’d address a question that we’re asked a great deal from advertisers, i.e. What is a Vertical Ad Network? Over the past few years, the term vertical ad network has been thrown about quite often in the online marketing world, as well as in some of the industry’s leading publications such as Silicon Alley Insider and even major publications such as Bloomberg Business.

Essentially a vertical ad network is a collection of like-minded or niche sites aggregated together providing high reach environment for advertisers a single category. In our case, Gourmet Ads only works with food and recipe sites. We provide advertisers a platform to reach our entire audience in a single media buy, with similar metrics to a large portal.

Gourmet Ads as a Vertical Ad Network was designed to benefit food manufacturers

Gourmet Ads as a vertical ad network was designed to benefit food manufacturers, supermarkets, food retailers, kitchenware companies and wineries and any other business needing to reach the grocery buying audience.

We accomplish this by focusing specifically on food and recipes as well as the people who love to eat, cook, and entertain. Our goal is to connect advertisers with highly relevant, quality food and recipe websites to achieve brand awareness goals as well as sending our audience to the advertiser’s site or landing page.

Additionally, the majority of our ad space is exclusive, meaning that it simply isn’t available on the market anywhere else. Building these exclusive relationships with food sites that have a loyal following of readers helps to ensure quality page views as well as ensuring that we have accurate information about our audience.

So finally,  a vertical ad network is a way of reaching customers you simply can’t find on other sites. Even larger sites that are horizontally focused and unrelated to food can’t provide you with the targeted ad space that the Gourmet Ads’ vertical ad network offers when reaching grocery buyers.

What is a Vertical Ad Network? 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.

Gourmet Ads is our first featured ad network.

We are quite pleased to have Gourmet Ads as our first featured ad network.

Gourmet Ads is a global vertical ad network reaching household Grocery Buyers with offices in North America, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. The Gourmet Ads network only represents quality food and wine websites throughout the world, aggregating and managing advertising across these highly relevant websites and blogs.

Below is our interview with Benjamin Christie, Managing Director and Founder of Gourmet Ads.

AdNetworks.NET: Currently, Gourmet Ads serves advertisers in the Food vertical who are trying to target consumers in USA, UK, Canada and Australia. Any other key market segments I am forgetting?

BC: No, those are our key geographical markets, but from an audience segment perspective Gourmet Ads concentrates on reaching the grocery buyer online. We tend to see this demographic being 27 – 55 year old female who makes the majority of the grocery buying decisions in the household. From a targeting perspective we then separate this up to 3 different age demographic targets enabling advertiser to target them via the sites in the network.

AdNetworks.NET: What competitive advantages does your previous experience as an Executive Chef, TV Co-Host, and Cookbook Author provide you when servicing your clients?

BC: Having experience in the food industry from being behind the stove to presenting recipes in front of a camera has certainly provided a great deal of understanding of what the public likes when it comes to food. Additionally having worked in online media and owned my own website prior to developing Gourmet Ads gave me real insight into how companies can use online to develop brand awareness and generate sales.

AdNetworks.NET: Without giving away your secrets, what makes for a successful campaign for an advertiser in your vertical looking to launch an online advertising campaign?

BC: The first is being relevant to our audience. Obviously food and wine advertisers have increased success simply because they are food and wine products. But we do run a great deal of advertising for non food or wine products and once again the advertising itself needs to be relevant to our audience of female, 27-55 years old. Areas that do perform well include Automotive, Travel, Financial and Lifestyle based campaigns.

The second is creative. There is no doubt that great looking creative with key messaging and strong calls to action outperforms ordinary ads. We highly recommend that clients produce Flash ads compared to static and we work hard with advertisers to develop creative that works. When possible we ask that they provide 2 or 3 sets of ads, so we can determine the best performing ad unit and messaging for campaign success.

AdNetworks.NET: How does working with Adify enhance your ability to deliver quality results for your advertiser and publisher partners?

Adify have been a great partner from day one and working with them has definitely given us competitive edge because of their platform. Adify provides us a wide range of targeting features allowing us to hone in on a client’s target market. Additionally working with Adify provides us the ability to manage hundreds of publisher relationships, opposed to just being an ad server.

AdNetworks.NET: Again, without giving away too much, are you finding certain technologies or targeting features most effective for an advertiser’s campaigns in your vertical?

Because we are a global network, every campaign we run must have some sort of geo targeting. We have the ability to go down to the zip level right up to country or global level. This has allowed us to work with smaller clients such as regional supermarkets and grocery store clients who only want to reach small areas such as 3 or 4 DMA’s. A fair percentage of clients are also using some sort of cookie based targeting as part of their campaigns.

AdNetworks.NET: Should small advertisers check out Gourmet Ads or do you primarily work with advertisers with a large ad spend?

Yes, we work with both global companies undertaking brand advertising right down to small family owned ecommerce sites requiring a direct response focus. Because of our geo targeting capabilites, we can restrict a advertising campaign to display locally in just a Zip Code, thus not wasting impressions in areas that are not relevant.

AdNetworks.NET: How do you define “quality content” when selecting publishers for your network?

The key is that unlike the majority of other ad networks, we simply don’t allow just any website to join and start running ad tags straight away. Every site we include in the Gourmet Ads network must adhere to our strict guidelines which are openly published on www.gourmetads.com. By rejecting unsuitable sites from the network means that we provide advertisers an environment which is brand safe and transparent.

For inclusion in the network, we look for a well designed website with uniquely developed content and a solid audience. We also work with sites to ensure they have ad units above the fold, thus making sites as attractive as we can for advertisers.

AdNetworks.NET: Ad exchanges have received significant media attention over the past 6 months.What are your thoughts on ad exchanges? Do you feel that comparing a premium, brand network to an ad exchange’s “remnant inventory” is “apples and oranges”?

We don’t use ad exchanges, because our clients require 100% transparency on which sites where their ads will run. Additionally because we have strict editorially criteria for sites to be included in the network we prefer not to run our ads on sites we don’t “know”.

AdNetworks.NET: Why should someone who hasn’t tried out a vertical network take a look?

BC: Particularly for food and wine advertisers, vertical ad networks such as Gourmet Ads provides advertisers the ability to buy and target advertising on multiple sites in one transaction, eliminating buying on a site-by-site basis. Because we specialise in food and wine, we know what works for advertisers and what doesn’t.

AdNetworks.NET: How has the ad network community developed since you got involved and where do you see it heading?

Since we started a few years back, the ad network community has certainly exploded which has increased the competition in the market place. Heading towards the future, I feel that there needs to be a little consolidation and I believe that as the economy returns, we’ll see acquisitions from not only other ad networks, but I believe they we’ll see media companies starting to buy into ad networks allowing them to increase their reach and viability in the long term.

AdNetworks.NET: Any exciting announcements/plans for the New Year?

As we roll into 2010, we’ve got lots on. The year starts with an advertising agency road show across London as we prepare to expand out UK network. Not only are we expanding the UK, but we’re recruiting more sites into the network enabling greater reach for clients, particularly in the US and Canada.

Throughout 2009 we’ve experienced a great deal of enquiry for beyond the banner placements, and we’re currently developing higher impact units for clients. Our team is working on about 4-5 different placements which can be deployed across hundreds of sites quickly and cost efficiently to provide greater ROI for advertising clients.

Source : www.adnetworks.net – Featured Ad Network – Gourmet Ads.

Featured Ad Network – Gourmet Ads 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.

Times are tough, economically speaking, and most people are being more aware of their spending habits. Everyone wants to make the most of their money and advertisers are no exception. Advertisers want and need to get the highest ROI (Return on Investment) possible for every ad they purchase. The latest statistics suggest that the best way for advertisers to increase their ROI is through vertical advertising online. Gourmet Ads is a vertical advertising network for food, wine and beer. Its all we do!

Vertical advertising is actually the internet advertising world’s name for the most highly targeted and effective advertising you can get. When using a vertical advertising network to market a product its all about relevancy; such as wine is advertised specifically on websites about wine. A food product, such as low-fat cooking spray would be advertised on a page that specializes in low-fat cooking or even just food in general. Overall Vertical advertising provides a highly qualified click.

Every advertiser knows that with traditional forms of advertising you basically throw your ads out in front of a large group of people and hope that a certain percentage of them are in your target market. But, with vertical advertising all of your advertising dollars are being focused directly on your target market. Vertical advertising provides significant ROI because only people who might be interested in your product see your advertising.

With consumers tightening their belts and decreasing their spending, it is more important now than ever to get a good ROI and create a strong brand image with consumers. Advertisers need their product to be at the forefront of the consumer’s mind every time they make a purchase in order to survive the tough economic times ahead. Historically it has been the companies that understood targeted advertising and the importance of branding that not only survived, but thrived during the worst economic times. In this day and age, vertical advertising is the best way to get a good ROI and increase brand awareness.

Vertical Advertising Increases 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.

Television commercials (or TVC’s as they are referred to in the industry) have been effective for the past 50 years or so in gaining mass reach. However is mass reach always the best method? If you could spend a great deal less in reaching only your target audience, wouldn’t that be a more effective media spend?

Recent upgrades to our ad serving platform have allowed advertisers greater flexibility to deliver TVCs online to your target audience. From a cost perspective online is far greater than online, so for every $ you spend online you get a wider reaching media buy compared to broadcast or cable TV.

The first option is to deliver your TVCs in a typical 300×250 ad unit. The 300×250 is one of the most used sizes on the internet. The TVC advertisement can be setup to run upon load for the first play or purely on an engagement basis. Either way this is a great option for reaching your target audience with video based creative.

The second option is to run your TVCs either pre roll or mid roll. This is where we play your TVCs on video sites within our network. The TVC will either play before or during the main video the viewer is watching. To encourage click throughs, we also serve concurrently a companion ad which along side the video player.

One of the key features about running TVCs online is that you can not only play the video but you can have a call to action, click throughs or lead generation after the video finishes. It means that you control the entire conversation from start to finish, unlike on TV which goes to the next commercial.

Taking your TVC online 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.

If you thought vertical ad networks were a fad fated to founder next to their more general counterparts, a new comScore research report will have you tipping your hat to these industry newcomers. According to a study of vertical networks — in essence subject-specific ad resellers — their collective reach has increased over the past year from 21.5 percent to over 57 percent. Whereas in March 2008, vertical networks reached 40.3 million unique visitors in the U.S., that number ballooned to 109.8 million in March 2009.

Additionally, vertical ad networks were found to be effective at reaching Internet users with “significantly higher than average engagement” in their preferred content category (e.g., gaming, entertainment, and health), with consumers spending at least 60 percent more time interacting with that category than the average site visitor.

What’s responsible for this increased reach and engagement? The vertical network space owes its newfound fame in part to new partnerships and new technologies that secure new users and improve business operations.

In January, MTV Networks (MTVN) introduced a comedy-themed Tribe, its term for its collection of vertical networks. The new Tribe includes sites like Comedy Central, JibJab, and Fark.com. This month, automotive research site AutoTrader.com launched a vertical network called AutoTrader.com Access that’s intended to reach in-market car buyers on related category sites.

Also assisting vertical networks in keeping their growth momentum going strong is the wide release of Google subsidiary DoubleClick’s Network Builder. The tool is designed for building and managing ad networks. In addition to integrating core DoubleClick products, like DART for Publishers (DFP), it provides a partner portal where site partners can directly access their sites’ performance and reporting data. Plus it simplifies financial reporting and partner payouts.

Vertical networks are in no small part affected by the news that vertical ad network platform Adify Corp. — which many vertical networks, including AutoTrader Access, employ — has launched a product that’s meant to simplify cross-network buys for agencies and advertisers. The new Adify Media service consolidates the over 150 vertical networks using the Adify Network Builder platform to create private marketplaces for advertisers and a customized and specialized media buy.

Whereas vertical networks for such content categories as travel, technology, beauty and environmentally conscious living already exist, there’s still space for newcomers if they pick a popular genre. One to watch is Gourmet Ads, another Adify partner that launched in July 2008. The gourmet food, wine, and beer network was created by Benjamin Christie, an Australian celebrity chef who also has his own popular food site and blog (look for him on Twitter at @gourmetads, too). The network started targeting U.S. sites in January and is up to 33 million monthly American page views and 42 million page views globally. Gourmet Ads will launch additional BBQ and coffee verticals to further entice advertisers searching for food-loving home cooks and wine drinkers who purchase quality cookware and appliances, drink wine with dinner, and visit wineries several times each year.

Established vertical networks are, of course, doing their part to boost reach and readership. Top women’s network Glam Media launched Glam Family last year and has since added womensforum.com. Tech-themed network NetShelter Technology Media, now with 90 million unique monthly visitors worldwide, ranked fourth last year among the fastest growing sites. Its growth can be attributed to efforts like Top Tech Gifts and Last Gadget Standing, two microsites the network built to leverage the expertise of editors from numerous sites within the NetShelter network.

Despite talk of the network space being too oversaturated to support such content-specific advertising businesses, vertical ad networks continue to demonstrate their value by exhibiting their massive reach. Keep an eye on the big ones and watch for new offerings to emerge in the year to come.

Source : www.clickz.com/3633578

By Tessa Wegert, ClickZ, Apr 30, 2009

Vertical Ad Network Update 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.

Vertical Ad Networks Reach Engaged, Targeted Audiences

This week comScore in the US released a press release on the Rapid Emergence of Vertical Ad Networks Reaching Engaged, Targeted Audiences. The study discusses how vertical advertising networks such as Gourmet Ads has substantially grown in the past year, from 21.5 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience in March 2008 to 57.1 percent in March 2009.

“comScore research indicates that vertical ad networks are a growing phenomenon in the online advertising space, in part because of their ability to deliver engaged, targeted audiences,” said Lesle Litton, VP, Media at comScore. “As more vertical ad networks prove their ability to effectively reach specific target audiences by aggregating mid-tail publisher sites, the industry will likely give greater consideration to these emerging ad delivery channels.”

Probably the biggest key finding the study for us was the confirmation that vertical ad networks were effective in reaching people with significantly higher than average engagement in their respective content categories. We’ve seen this internally through campaign metrics and reports, that when advertising campaigns are closely aligned with the content of the Gourmet Ads network the engagement rates are far higher than when not closely related.

Gourmet Ads is a Food Vertical Ad Networks

One reason for continued engagement rates is that we editorially select sites for quality content and work closely with our partner sites in terms of above the fold, providing the ultimate environment to run an advertising campaign. Gourmet Ads continues to build our unique audience, which is largely duplicated and from this week’s release by comScore we’re on the right track.

To read the full release about Vertical Ad Networks by comScore visit www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2790

Comscore & Vertical Ad Networks 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.

For a little over a year, vertical ad network platform Adify has operated a centralized sales team to broker inventory for those of its network customers who want the service. Now the company is formalizing its ad network offering with the creation of a unit, called Adify Media, that will offer a menu of individual site placements bundled with online properties owned by its parent company, Cox Enterprises.

The combined reach of the ad network will approach 90 million uniques, approximately 17 million of which will be attributable to Cox’s own sites, according to ComScore.

Adify Media prides itself on its dedication to transparency for both buyer and seller. None of its inventory is offered on a blind basis, and its network partners — whom it calls network builders — are free to opt out of individual campaigns or the network as a whole. When its six regional ad sellers are dealing with a client, Adify does not mention the names of individual networks using its platform, so as to avoid channel conflict, focusing instead on the properties themselves.

For advertisers, Adify emphasizes highly customized ad packages and site-by-site deliverability reporting. Its reporting data can be viewed by ad space, line item, creative execution or ad size.

“I don’t think there’s another aggregator that offers anywhere near that level of pipeline visibility, handholding consulting, and the ability to opt in or out at granular levels,” said Joelle Gropper Kauffman, Adify’s SVP of marketing and corporate partnerships. “For us it’s all about people staying in control of their assets and their inventory.”

Adify Media is offering a degree of creative variation in its menu of ad formats. According to Gropper Kauffman, Adify is the primary ad server for many sites offered by its media team. Therefore, she noted, “we can do things you just don’t do with a network.” For instance, she said available formats could include expandable ads, sponsorships, roadblocks, and interstitial video. Standard targeting options will include geographic, behavioral, and browser-based delivery.

Key to Adify Media’s pitch is the supposition that mid-tail publishers of the sort that define its network have more engaged audiences than do major portals and ad networks. Its 160 network partners cover topic areas such as politics (Politico Network), lifestyle (Martha’s Circle), and food (Gourmet Ads).

Adify employs sales reps in New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Its team, led by general manager Rodney Mayers, has already sold campaigns to Best Western Hotels, Febreze, HP, and Microsoft, among others.

Source ; Clickz

Adify Rolls Out Centralized Ad Network 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.

How are you Advertising your Winery Website ?

So you’ve spent time and budget on developing your winery website. Your winery site has all the bells and whistles from the latest ecommerce system through to inventory management and point of sales software integration. There is also a wide range of delivery methods, as well as all the wines which are for sale, including the latest vintage as well as the reserve vintage. Your winery site has it all. So what’s the next step?

For many wineries, one of the most important steps is often forgotten about when developing a winery website, is Advertising your Winery Website. The advertising plan is about how you plan to reach your target consumers and drive wine sales on the site.

Your media plan when advertising your winery website should include information on;

1. Target Market
2. Location of ideal customer
3. Advertising Message
4. Launch Promotion
5. Budget

Driving new customers to your site is what it’s about and having an online advertising campaign is the logical medium to start with, given that you are promoting your website. The aim should be to advertise where possible consumers are engaging online, which is why advertising in a vertical advertising network such as Gourmet Ads is ideal.

Gourmet Ads has the ability to run online advertising locally, nationally or internationally depending on the target you wish to reach. Apart from reaching wine consumers and wine connoisseurs when advertising your winery website, we can reach also reach food communities as well through our food vertical.

Advertising your Winery Website 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.

Some advertising networks will unscrupulously sell their network blind to media buyers and media planners. “Blind” meaning that even the advertising sales team aren’t even exactly sure about where the advertising will end up. What generally happens is that after the campaign has been push lived that they discover their advertising is running on unsuitable sites.

Unlike these unscrupulous advertising networks, Gourmet Ads isn’t a blind media buy. We’re actually very proud of the premium websites and blog which we work with as most have dedicated audiences and produce great content all the time. Our close relationship with our publishers even allows us to even on occasions do more integrated advertising solutions for advertising clients.

Apart from disclosing all the website publishers and bloggers we work with, we actually allow advertisers and advertising agencies if requested to choose right down to the ad unit. So if they don’t want to run a particular ad unit, that’s fine. By providing a site list and allowing choice right down to the ad unit, it allows advertisers to undertake a really optimized media buy.

So if you are unsure where your existing advertising campaigns are running and don’t trust the network youre working with, then Gourmet Ads can help.

We’re Not a Blind Media Buy 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.