Are you running online display ads to create your brand ?

Advertising via online display ads has long been established as an extremely effective way to increase brand awareness, draw in new customers and to educate consumers about certain products. As Gourmet Ads has been in the industry for many years and have been using online display ads for just as long, we know a thing or two about the importance of online display ads and how they can affect advertising campaigns.

Many people have questioned the use of online display ads, but the effectiveness has long been demonstrated by Gourmet Ads. Online Display ads can come in various forms, but most commonly can appear as web banners on various webpages. Gourmet Ads supports various banner formats and this type of advertising has been a proven way of generating click throughs to affiliated sites.

Click throughs and conversions are obviously a major part of advertising campaigns and are a great way for directing consumers to different sites whilst making money. However, beyond this, Gourmet Ads online display ads are crucial for the branding of products. Branding is vital in terms of customers indentifying goods and to be able to tell one company from the next.

Online display ads with Gourmet Ads can therefore help set your apart from the rest. If branding is all about standing out and establishing yourself as a unique company, let Gourmet Ads help you create your identity.

Evidence asserting that online display ads are very effective in creating a brand identity

When it comes to branding, we will often find that ‘the more exposure the better’ is usually the case. Volvo recently ran a study testing the impact of multi-screen advertising and the effect is had on consumers. Out of those who were only exposed to the Volvo advert on television, 50% could remember seeing it. Those that were exposed to the advert on TV, PC, tablet and smartphone however could recall seeing the ad at a rate of 74%.

The results from this case study are clear – the more a product or brand is exposed, the more effective the branding and the more likely consumers are to remember your product. Connecting with the right customer at the right time, emotionally engaging them and then measuring all the analytics is something that is best achieved through the use of online display ads.

Gourmet Ads supports a very wide range of advertising campaigns and provides platforms for display ads and pre roll video ads too. By offering these to you, Gourmet ads can help create a more effective advertising campaign with online display ads for your brand which ultimately will not only increase brand awareness and attract new customers, it will also educate your potential consumers about your range of products as well.

Display Ads Build Brands for Marketers 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 Gym Memberships to a largely female audience

No matter the month of the year, gyms are always advertising gym memberships and bring in new members. If its going to the beach or trying to keep that New Years resolution, there seems to be a dozen or so times in the year which are perfect time to market gym memberships. But who do you market to? Most so-called fitness buffs already have a gym membership, meaning that sites dedicated to this clientele bring in only a limited number of new memberships. If you are in the gym business, consider marketing to the Gourmet Ads audience.

The reason Gourmet Ads readers are a perfect fit for gym membership marketing efforts is that they are often the head of their households and the primary grocery buyer. Our audience is also made up of largely women and men who are interested in living a healthier lifestyle. Many of our viewers spend time looking for meal and recipe ideas that involve healthy foods, and others look for healthy living ideas on related lifestyle sites. In fact, our audience is the very same group of women who join gyms such as Curves, where they can get healthy while spending time with friends.

Local Advertising – Geo Targeting your Advertising Gym Memberships

Gourmet Ads has a number of marketing tools that can help you get the message about your gym in front of the right reader, at the right time.  Gourmet Ads uses a marketing technique called geo-targeting, which means that we can display your ad to users in a specific geographic area, meaning that you get targeted views of people who live or work in your area. For larger, chain gyms, Gourmet Ads can display your ad to a larger audience, while still using geo-targeted marketing to bring in the viewers you want. Another method that can be used is targeted marketing, in which customers who have previously visited your site will view an ad about your gym when they visit one of our network of food-related sites. This helps build up brand identity for your gym, and can bring in more hits to your page.

If you plan to advertise special offers, such as free classes, discounts on memberships, or free trial memberships, Gourmet Ads can place advertisements for you that will reach our budget-savvy customers. Many of our customers spend a significant amount of time researching online before they make a purchase or even before they enter the doors of a local gym so advertising on our network of sites can help raise awareness of your gym and bring in foot traffic that other methods wouldn’t. By seeing your ad as they visit several different sites, Gourmet Ads customers are more likely to click through to find out more about your gym and what you have to offer.

Advertising gym memberships to health conscious shoppers just makes sense and that’s exactly what Gourmet Ads can offer you. By placing information about your gym on our extensive network of food-related sites that appeal to shoppers looking for a healthier lifestyle, you can reach a new audience that you may be missing out on. Don’t forget, with the approach of warmer weather, advertising gym memberships as gifts can be a great idea, and Gourmet Ads reaches the network of wives and mothers that are likely to purchase gym memberships for a spouse or loved one. Gourmet Ads doesn’t just get page views for your site, we get targeted page views from the shoppers who are most likely to come in and find out more about a membership at your gym. Contact the Gourmet Ads team to find out more about how our network of sites can create more returns when advertising gym memberships and bring new members to your gym.

Advertising Gym Memberships 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.

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.

Is your Brand Advertising Kitchen Appliances Online ?

Competition among small kitchen appliance manufacturers is heavy, so finding the right way to advertise your kitchen appliances brand is essential for the success of your company. While many big name manufacturers have gained a large part of the small kitchen appliances market, savvy customers are always on the lookout for companies that provide quality appliances at great price points. That’s why Gourmet Ads is the perfect choice for advertising your brand- our customers know food and are always on the lookout for clever, quality kitchen appliances that fit their lifestyle.

Our audience of includes a wide range of consumers, but our primary audience are the type of shoppers that look for the best deal on a small appliance, not just the biggest name or latest trend. Our audience of shoppers are home chefs who are usually the primary shoppers and meal preparers in the home. They look for items that make creating meals easier and more convenient, as well as those that provide some level of innovation that make life just a little simpler. Not only do our customers look for standard kitchen appliances like toasters, can openers, coffee makers, slow cookers, microwaves, mixers, blenders, and food processors, they are also in the market for specialty items. Whether you sell juicers, panini presses, coffee grinders, rice cookers, bread machines, deep fryers, pasta makers, waffle makers, popcorn makers, ice cream machines, or fondue pots, Gourmet Ads has a customer who wants what you have.

Our team uses a variety of advertising tools to get your products in front of the customers who are most likely to use them. For example, Gourmet Ads has the ability to use targeted advertising so that a customer who does spend time researching the best Belgian waffle maker will see the one your company offers as quickly as possible. What we are about is advertising kitchen appliances to an audience that knows and loves food just makes sense.

Consumers are spending more time than ever researching Kitchen Appliances online

As the market for small kitchen appliances continues to grows, consumers are spending more time than ever researching the latest kitchen gadgets online and Gourmet Ads has the experience you need to build brand awareness. If you are ready to show the home cook what your company has to offer, let the team from Gourmet Ads tell you more about the creative ways we can help you market and sell your small kitchen appliances.

Advertising Kitchen Appliances 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.

Buy Audiences of your Target Market

Vertical Ad Networks, like Gourmet Ads represent a change in how advertisers think about marketing their product. The rise of internet advertising and the growing need to deliver ads to the audience that is most receptive regardless of geographic limitations has lead retailers to turn to behavioral targeting. Highly specialized and niche vertical ad networks like us allow companies and advertising agencies reach the right customers online easier and at scale compared to an individual sites. For example Gourmet Ads is able to reach a specific, targeted audience on a range of sites from recipe sites to blogs all of which have their own audience. By aggregating these, we are able to offer at scale a quality audience of grocery buyers, providing an efficient method to buy audiences.

When marketing food and home goods, it makes sense to reach the people who are most likely to buy those items- the primary shoppers and decision makers in homes. Historically, advertisers have turned to branded content sites to place ads, hoping to reach shoppers who are visiting those sites. While this method has gained results, ads placed through ad networks reach a more specific, highly targeted audience. Why? The answer lies in how customers are approached. When you place an ad on a branded site, you are appealing to the audience for that single site. However, there are likely dozens of similar sites that each appeals to a portion of the audience you are looking for. In order to reach a large audience, you are forced to purchase ads individually on each site. Gourmet Ads reaches a broader section of your target audience by displaying your ad on hundreds of related quality sites, giving the impression that you are advertising on each site individually. As such with Gourmet Ads you Buy Audiences not individual websites.

Gourmet Ads allow you to Buy Audiences across hundreds of quality niche food sites

The difference between buying advertising space in front of an audience rather than on a single branded website is that you are increasing the number of your potential buyers that you reach by limiting your advertising to sites that appeal to your target audience. For example, food manufacturers often advertise in women’s interest magazines, knowing that some women who read these magazines make purchasing decisions and enjoy cooking. Even better, food manufacturers advertise in magazines about food and cooking, knowing that customers who read these magazines are likely to make food purchases. This is exactly what the Gourmet Ads network can do for you- our team researches each site we advertise on to understand who views that site, what they buy, and even where they live. Then, we reject sites that don’t appeal to our overall audience – the head household grocery buyer. Gourmet Ads is highly selective when determining which sites we advertise on, but that pickiness means that you can be sure your advertising message is going out to the right audience at the right time.

The proof that Gourmet Ads works is in our results – our advertisers reach their target audience every time, that’s why the majority of our clients renew. There’s a lot of research that suggests that knowing which customer is going to see your ad makes it possible to design advertisements to appeal to the customer you want to sell to.

Gourmet Ads understands our audience, giings advertisers the upper hand in reaching the right customer at the right time with the right message. Rather than spending advertising on a branded site where you may reach the customers you need, let Gourmet Ads design a campaign that will display your ad to our proven and scalable audience of household grocery buyers. For your next advertising campaign why not Buy Audiences opposed to stand alone websites.

Buy Audiences Not Websites 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.

There are two important parts to every online advertising campaign and both being equally important when it comes to Optimizing Advertising Campaigns. So what are they?

These are ;

1. The “where” refers to websites and blogs that are relevant to your target audience.
2. The “what” refers to your actual advertising creative you provide.

First off, let’s talk about the “Where”. No matter the campaign, there will always be a publisher where your advertising gets plenty of impressions, but attracts very few click throughs. So, instead of wasting your advertising dollars, the trafficking staff at Gourmet Ads can, mid duration optimize your advertising campaigns to maximize clicks and performance. Optimizing Advertising Campaigns is an important part of every campaign and a simple cull of non-performing sites can significantly increase the aggregated click through rate of the campaign.

Now comes the “What”. Depending on the creative, some ads will perform better than other within the same campaign. We regularly receive from advertisers, multiple advertising creative for a campaign. A week after the campaign has launched, Gourmet Ads can optimize your advertising campaigns by removing the creative that isn’t performing. Of course you have to try different things once in a while to see what works and what doesn’t, but once you find out that a particular creative isn’t performing it is time to pull it and focus on the ads that are working to maximize your advertising campaigns effectiveness. When this happens we simply shift the budget from the non-performing advertisement across to the performing creative.

Optimizing Advertising Campaigns is all about increasing their performance and the return for advertisers, so if your advertising network isn’t optimizing your campaigns, contact Gourmet Ads and book your media with us.

Optimizing Advertising Campaigns 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 a Cooking Ad Network made up of Cooking and Recipe Sites

I was asked today by a kitchenware advertiser if Gourmet Ads was a Cooking Ad Network. The reason the advertiser was asking, was if we were a cooking ad network was because they planned to run advertising nearby online recipes. The kitchenware media buyer added that placements located nearby online recipes was essential because this is where they had been seeing the best conversions. Our observations over the past 12 months are similar.

So after that question I thought I might highlight some of the sorts of sites we’ve included in Gourmet Ads as to illustrate that we are a cooking ad network and that we run next to online recipes.

Sites that make up our Cooking Ad Network include;

• Recipe Websites
• User Generated Recipe Sites
• Cooking Video Sites
• Recipe Search Engines
• Cooking Forums
• Food Blogs

Apart from simply running beside recipes, the majority of the sites on the Gourmet Ads network can run beyond the banner campaigns including Floating Ads, Interstitial Ads and Over the Page to name just a few. These high profile, high impact creative advertising units provide unparamount engagement with targeted audiences.

Gourmet Ads can develop a bespoke media plan for your brand that’s not only cost effective but highly targeted to your audience. So if you’re looking for a Cooking Ad Network for your next campaign, then go no further.

Cooking 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.

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.

Lots of Advertisers are booking 12 Month Media Plans

Typically speaking, Gourmet Ads is sent RFPs (request for proposals) from advertising agencies usually 2 months or 3 months before a campaign is slated to commence. What we’ve found throughout 2009 that the majority of the media plans were short lead time, sometimes the same week opposed to 2008 when we were given very long lead times. But as great deal of food and wine companies are now starting their 2010 advertising budgets, we are finding that things have changed again.

What we’ve recently been receiving from advertising agencies is requests for not just proposals for campaigns, but we’re being asked to help develop a 12 month media plan.  Either with or without budgets, we’re able to develop a complete plan.

Some of the areas we take into consideration when developing 12 month media plans are;

• Peaks and Troughs of traffic
• Seasonal Issues (Holiday Periods)
• Products Selection
• Environmental issues (weather)
• Micro site development
• Share of voice throughout the plan

One of the advantages of developing a 12 month media plan is the ability to targeting consumers though over the life of the campaign. Using technology based targeting such as Behavioral Targeting can help to reach the most relevant people throughout the campaign.

If you’d like Gourmet Ads to help prepare your 12 month media plan we generally require much more information in your brief than compared to campaigns briefs. Ideally we’d also prefer to be given a budget; however we can develop 12 month media plans without a budget.

12 Month Media Plans 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.