Categories: Media Planning & Buying|By |4 min read|

Recipe Websites

Recipe websites are a godsend for food and wine brands. Unfortunately, many brands don’t take advantage of recipe websites for advertising as much as they should. In this article, we’ll look at some common food advertising tricks used in recipe websites.

So why exactly are recipe websites so valuable for marketing purposes? Let’s find out.

The Benefits of Advertising on Recipe Websites

There really is nothing quite as targeted as placing a food product ingredient on the same page as a recipe that calls for that ingredient.

When advertising a particular product, it’s so important to choose exactly where those ads are going to end up. Whether you’re dealing with a banner ad, native ad, or video ad, the location is everything. You wouldn’t place an ad for gourmet cheese on an article about car repair, would you? It wouldn’t make sense simply because the ad is not relevant to the interests of the person reading that particular article. Relevance is key.

Recipe websites or blogs are excellent spot to advertise food, especially individual ingredients offered by grocery brands. No matter whether you’re a small or large food brand, you can easily do food blog advertising via recipe websites. Recipe websites look cool in native advertising and native advertising examples show that recipe websites have a high conversion rate.

For example, let’s say a consumer is reading a blog post about how to make lemon meringue pie. This particular recipe calls for cream of tartar, which the reader may not have on hand in their kitchen. Next to the recipe is a display ad with a photo of a container of cream of tartar. The reader would be much more likely to click this advertisement because it’s extremely relevant to their interests in that very moment.

Advertising food and wine with a very broad, general net could be a massive waste of money. Remember the car repair and gourmet cheese comparison? On a broader level, some businesses or brands can definitely benefit from advertising pretty much anywhere they can. These types of brands are relevant to everyone at any time. However, food and wine brands do not have this luxury. Even though we all eat and drink, we may be less likely to show interest in a food ad if we are reading about, say, car repair. Placing food ads on recipe pages is the best possible way to bring in leads with an advertising campaign.

The Elements of a Recipe Website

Not all recipe websites are equal in quality. Some are very conversion-friendly, while others just don’t meet the mark and have high bounce rates. A recipe website worth advertising on will have a few common beneficial elements:

  • Excellent, high-quality recipes that are informative and delicious.
  • Absolutely no poor spelling or grammar mistakes within the recipe.
  • Recipes that are not extremely long-winded and put too much focus on the “pre-recipe story.” (You know, the ones we scroll through immediately just to get to the recipe?)
  • High-quality gorgeous photography of the food in question.
  • A well-organized index of recipes that viewers can explore with ease.
  • Ample space for banner and video ads without overwhelming the reader.
  • A prominent search more.
  • Mobile optimization and responsiveness.
  • Quick loading capabilities.
  • Optimization for social media posts, especially Pinterest.
  • Highly professional and aesthetically pleasing web design and color schemes.

How Can Gourmet Ads Help?

Recipe websites are at the very core of Gourmet Ads’ mission. We believe that placing ads next to recipes online is one of the best ways to drive interest in your product. Our Gourmet Ads team has done all the hard work to help our readers to learn about banner ad design. 

Gourmet Ads also contributed to campaign performance and viewership through their food blogs that should be included in every campaign. We’ll highlight the top 10 food websites that you should check out. Our top priority is to allow our advertisers and clients to curate the best possible recipe websites that are highly relevant to their ad campaigns and individual products. Our publishing team works to select each individual food website or recipe website that will host ad campaigns through Gourmet ads.

This type of branding will work during any season in which certain cuisines or recipes are popular. On top of your seasonal advertising practices, it’s always wise to keep up your ad campaigns for recipe pages.

For example, a grocery brand may sell condensed cream of mushroom soup. Outside of the Thanksgiving advertising season, that specific product may not be extremely popular. However, the brand may find higher conversions if the ad for this product is placed on a recipe page for green bean casserole during the Thanksgiving advertising season. Many of the recipe website advertising tricks one can think of are very simple and common sense.