Categories: Strategy|By |3.6 min read|

Vertical Advertising

Vertical and horizontal advertising can be appealing for just about every industry out there. However, vertical advertising may be the ideal choice for niche businesses or companies in the food and wine world.

Vertical advertising may seem a bit complicated to advertisers who are not familiar with it, but it is actually quite a simple concept. Let’s look at what vertical advertising is and how brands can use this form of marketing to their advantage.

What is Vertical Advertising?

Vertical advertising campaigns are used to reach established customers and prospective customers in very specific markets. A wine manufacturer may use vertical advertising to target very specific restaurants that include wine on their menus, rather than consumers themselves. They could do this by advertising on websites that specifically target catering or the Italian restaurant industry, for example.

There are vertical ad networks in a variety of industries, including automotive, travel, finance, sports, real estate, and military industries.

Vertical vs Horizontal Advertising

Horizontal advertising is used by brands to advertise in media in order to cover an effective amount of consumers and customers in a majority of sectors. For example, a wine brand may target consumers via a local magazine to reach a very broad range of viewers that may or may not be interested in wine.

Both horizontal and vertical advertising requires different advertising techniques. There are numerous differences between vertical and horizontal advertising. Vertical advertising is especially useful to brands and advertisers in very niche industries, rather than just throwing ads into the pool of the general public. It works to reach specific demographics that would be interested in a solution or product.

Vertical advertising is extremely useful to businesses in the food, alcohol, or cuisine industries because particular tastes can vary significantly across a customer base. By specifically targeting demographics, food or wine products can be marketed directly to the people who want them. Food blog advertising is becoming more popular, which increases the frequency of blog advertisements. Food blog advertising allows the general public to see the food served in their neighborhood restaurants. Furthermore, restaurant owners frequently use social media marketing, digital marketing, blog ads, and ad networks to boost sales. These tactics are frequently used by food advertising agencies to promote food blogs.

While horizontal advertising may appeal to companies with a broad range of products or services, vertical advertising is the ideal method to use for businesses with specific or niche products.

Vertical Marketing Strategies

If your brand offers a specific food product or service that is very useful to consumers in niche industries, you’ll need to advertise through websites as well as publications that are specific to the food industry. These hotspots for vertical advertising include:

  • Trade events for food and wine
  • Specific articles that seek to provide insight for food and wine manufacturers
  • Consumer magazines
  • Niche blog posts and niche food-related blogs
  • Advertisements at events, workshops, etc.
  • Search Engine Optimization with niche keywords

Agency holding companies that focus on vertical advertising will have a thorough understanding of the industry and will be able to develop focused campaigns that resonate with the target audience. Advertising in this way can help establish credibility and brand awareness, as well as target specific industry markets.

To properly penetrate a vertical market, you’ll need to have quite a lot of knowledge about your industry. That means knowing the terminology, industry trends, common challenges, and everything about the positive and negative points of the industry. In order for a vertical advertising platform to facilitate the best advertising campaign experience, very specific information will be needed. You’ll need to be an expert and extremely familiar with the needs of your target audience.

Build up a content strategy before diving into vertical advertising in order to get the most out of this marketing method. Your content strategy should be tailored specifically to each and every stage of your buyers’ journey.

Gourmet Ads as a Vertical Advertising Solution

Vertical advertising is a niche of a category, so it can be difficult to find advertising platforms that will fit your niche. For food and wine businesses, look no further than Gourmet Ads. Want to learn more about how we can provide you with the best vertical advertising network out there for food brands? Contact us today to learn more!