Australian advertisers are geared to more effectively target food, beer and wine enthusiasts following the launch of Australia’s first vertical advertising network for the fast moving consumer goods industry.
Vertical ad networks are a collection of websites that function as a one-stop-shop for purchasing and monitoring advertising across multiple sites.
While there has been a growing interest in niche culinary sites due to the TV celebrity chef phenomenon in recent years, Australian chef and creator of the Gourmet Ads network, Benjamin Christie, saw a need to respond to the problem of attracting advertising to long tail, niche publishers, including blogs, in the food and drink space by developing a network that would be a “win win” for advertisers, media buyers and publishers.
The Gourmet Ads network offers media buyers and advertisers the ability to purchase advertising across multiple sites and blogs in one transaction.
Lachlan Brahe, Sydney and Brisbane managing director at Emitch, said: “I’d like to think that Gourmet Ads will get some traction with FMCG advertisers by consolidating a large grocery buying audience into a single, simple media buy.”
Christie said the vertical network, powered by Adify, provides online publishers with a viable alternative to Google Adsense or Affiliate programs which he claims result in little revenue.
Gourmet Ads sells display ads on a CPM (cost per thousand) basis which Christie said offers publishers a better return than the cost per click structure used by Adsense.
Brahe said online advertising spend for FMCGs is low compared to other industry verticals. “Online media represents around 4% of the total advertising spend for FMCGs which is low considering the opportunity that digital media affords an advertiser to reach a main grocery buying audience,” he said.
Christie added: “Larger media companies don’t want to deal with smaller sites and blogs which generate 50,000 to 100,000 pages per month.”
Brahe believes the network, which currently represents two million Australian pages per month, will attract advertisers.
