Global Food Advertising Trends for 2012 in On-line Future

Posted by AFN Staff Writers on 5th January 2012

Food advertising network, Gourmet Ads, has issued its predictions of what the online advertising landscape has in store for those who are looking at advertising in the food sector. Speaking from Australia and operating as a global business, Gourmet Ads’s founder and managing director Benjamin Christie has tipped the following trends:

1. Media Buying with Data
In 2011, one of the buzz terms was DMP (data management platform). Christie predicts that digital media buyers will seek out media-buying real-time bidding platforms where the data is presented. More media buyers will want the data to be able to buy the impressions they actually want at scale. Once advertisers have developed a clear use of their own 1st Party Data sets, they can begin to buy only those impressions they want. The data to service this platform will continue to be refined and developed and will ensure continued growth in the data.

2. Mobile Phone Advertising to Grow
More companies are gaining an understanding of the technologies for mobile advertising and are enquiring about building an app or dedicated mobile site, if they do not already have these. This can be expected to translate into better-quality mobile advertising in 2012, and this will extend well beyond the text ads that are still the main type of creative use for mobile devices.

3. Real-Time Bidding Budgets to Increase
As platforms for real time media-buying bidding for this are utilized more frequently, bigger budgets will become available for this format and type of advertising buying.

4. Branded Recipes
Food manufacturers and supermarkets will produce more branded recipes eg recipe of ingredients for cooking with the food in the package. Likewise, there will be additional recipe integration as part of the media plan as demand for recipes grows. So, when people search for a recipe online, a brand with the chosen recipe will be displayed alongside the recipe and with links to other recipe ingredients and recipe sites, or where consumers can then click through to the brand’s website for the ingredients, cooking method and presentation.

5. Video Advertising
“If you don’t think video advertising for the digital advertising industry was huge in 2011, you haven’t been paying attention”, says Christie.

Why the huge recent growth in video advertising? For one thing, it’s seen as very similar to buying television, and advertisers and their agencies do understand how to buy TV media. Also, engagement rates are consistently solid (notice this is not the same as click-through rates). Creative is rather standard now as 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. However in 2011 more non-linear advertising solutions came to market.

“Video advertising is a fast-growing section of our business in 2011,” Gourmet Ads’ Christie says and he has seen huge demand from advertisers . “We don’t think this will subside anytime soon”. However he identified a number of the challenges remaining for video:

A lack of quality video inventory; and
The technical requirements needed to set up a publisher to accept video pre-roll ads. Video hosting platforms for publishers are improving, but publishers need to acquire a better understanding of the technologies and the costs involved.

6. The 300 x 600 Ad Size
The 300 x 600 is one the largest display ad sizes available, with many calling it the “half page ad unit.” Not only is there lots of space to get the message across from a creative standpoint, according to Christie, but in testing Gourmet Ads says it has seen engagement rates three to 10 times better than regular display sizes.

“Over the past six 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 2012 will see more advertisers using this size,” according to Ben Christie.

7. Vertical Ad Networks will Continue to Grow
“There was plenty of consolidation across the digital advertising ecosystem last year. We saw video companies acquire other video advertising companies, we saw ad networks acquire other ad networks and major web portals continue making investments that made sense for them. What we didn’t see was any acquisitions of vertical ad networks in 2011”, Christie notes.

“Many in the digital press predicted that vertical ad networks will die a slow death, which really surprises me. From our perspective, they are very much alive and kicking. We’ve seen amazing growth again this year and are expecting continued growth in 2012. In talking to my peers at other vertical ad networks, all report solid growth and revenues. Gourmet Ads in 2011 strengthened our inventory by investing in RecipeBridge.com, and I know other networks have been quietly acquiring more web properties and inventory which they can call their own. So I’m predicting vertical networks will continue to grow in 2012,” Christie concluded on the subject of vertical ad networks”.

8. CPG Brands to Increase Budgets
Christie predicts that in 2012 we’re going to see smaller to mid-sized companies move to online, where they can easily compete with large FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods)/CPG companies, possibly moreso on a localized/geo-targeted basis.

9. Contextual Advertising for Food Advertisers
Another advertising trend we’ve seen from food advertisers in 2011 is the desire to advertise on pages where recipe content is closely related or contextually relevant,” Christie says.

He noted, “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 would be a seafood company running a campaign for salmon and only advertising on pages where salmon was being featured, say in recipes for smoked or grilled salmon. It’s relatively easy for a single site to provide this type of targeting, but we’re working on being able to target contextually against videos with pre-roll video advertising. The challenge has always been one of lack of contextually targeted inventory available.

“Bringing in 2012, we predict that companies will use contextual advertising for part of their media plan in two ways. First, they will allocate 10-20 percent of the media plan’s budget to contextual advertising to ensure the plan remains relevant, then use retargeting and then general run of food. And secondly, they will book a six- or 12-month media plan to “own” the term, i.e. they will own “salmon recipes” much like a sponsorship-type investment, changing the ad creative when required.”

About Gourmet Ads
According to Benjamin Christie, his company Gourmet Ads (http://www.gourmetads.com) is a global food advertising network placing more than 100 million ads per month, mainly online, focusing on branding campaigns for reaching the grocery buyer online. With operations in the U.S.A., U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand, Gourmet Ads claims to have over 300 cooking websites “where consumers are spending time online researching recipes, making meal decisions and developing their grocery shopping lists”.

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