NaplesNews.com wins Top Ad for restaurants' geo-targeted mobile campaign during golf tournaments
The $126,000 online-only campaign involved 30 local restaurants
Advertisers: 30 restaurants near Naples-based PGA Tour: La Pinata, Sophia's Ristorante Italiano, Stoney's Steakhouse, Valentino's Pizza, Falafel Gril, and Inca's Kitchen.
Audience: Attendees of the Naples PGA Tour
Media: Naples Daily News; NaplesNews.com
Owner: E.W. Scripps Company
Key Executives: Cheri Koerner and Doug Dittamore, Campaign Specialists, Centro; David Cuddihy, Advertising Director, Food Category, Naples Daily News; Shawna Devlin, Advertising Director, Naples Daily News; and Kurt Larson, Creative Designer, Centro
Challenge: Small restaurants in Naples benefit from a spike in tourism during the PGA tournament and other major sports events. However, they are typically too small for a sophisticated multi-media ad network buy that includes creative and landing pages targets nearby tourists.
The Naples Daily News decided to band restaurants together to create one big campaign that targeted sports tourists and gave each restaurant an individual interactive presence.
Concept: The campaign relied a simple concept “Best Places to Eat in Naples” that was primarily bassed on geo-targeted mobile ads via CentroLift's ad network (see ratings and reviews of this company on MediaExecsTech here), plus a smaller buy of post-it notes on Naplesnews.com's home page.
The campaign broke the Naples DMA into five zones geo-fenced by gps, and included six local restaurants for each zone, so a total of 30 restaurants could split the cost between them. Restaurants in each zone offered different kinds of food.
“Our advice was simple: We can execute the buy if we are able to gather enough restaurants to form one large campaign. We were able to create separate landing pages in house, as well as help from Naples,” said Evan Pease, director of affliate relations for CentroLift, the white labeled partner that places and optimizes geo-targeted mobile adnetwork buys.
CentroLift's exclusive by DMA, white label audience extension program is able to fulfill zones because the ad network includes so many other national media properties and apps including ESPN and weather channels, used by people who live in or are visiting Naples. This provides a quick way to create a larger audience in a small zone or target.
For the "Best Dining in Naples" campaign, CentroLift Each zone had its own mobile creative, headline ( "Best dining in Central Naples" or "Best Dining in Downtown Naples") and landing page, click to map, click to call and click to the client's web site.
Sales reps encouraged each restaurant to create a special offer prompting the click-to-call so that results were trackable.
“Our strategy overall was to let out of town tourists get a sense of what was local and where to eat. We relied on knowledge that people would be searching on their phone for hotel info, restaurant ideas, as well as using apps during their stay,“ said Evan Pease, affiliate manager for CentroLift.
An example of mobile creative on a weather app, AccuWeather, is pictured below. Tourists from out-of-state who are checking the weather in Naples via the popular app, are prompted to see restaurants nearby:
Creative linked to landing pages showing advertising restaurants, with maps, special offers and click-to-call features:
Finally, while the campaign was built around three major golf tournaments, many of the restaurants sign on for a year.
Results
The campaign saw a six month average of .61% CTR in mobile, with over $126,000 in revenue to the media company during the course of the campaign.
The client considered this return on their advertising investment “a huge success" and were comfortable with results from offers.
“By banding together we realized that we could be very creative with our campaigns. From this, we have been able utilize this style in other verticals and on other screens,” Pease said. “Targeting verticals very specifically, and having a keen understanding of how a specific media’s needs match the client’s, we were able to provide the perfect fit for the restaurants.”
Judges' take
LMI's judges have been on the look-out for a good example of a campaign that takes advantage of the unique benefits of mobile audience extension, and this campaign fits the bill.
Behaviorial, demographic ic and geo-targeting at level of zones within cities is the most effective way to advertise many products, but also requires more robust ad inventory than even large media companies can supply on their own. However, with CTR rates at .6% - tens of times higher than a traditional untargeted banner ad - this campaign demonstrates why local and regional businesses prefer targeting, especially on mobile phones where day-parts and proximity are critical.
This kind of interactive campaign helps build longer term strategic relationships with advertisers.
Judges also liked the "sold-out" aspect of having only a set number of businesses in the vertical to create urgency, and annual plans that make the campaign ROI for restaurants and media partners beyond just the PGA tournament.
Congratulations to Cheri Koerner and Doug Dittamore, Campaign Specialists, Centro; David Cuddihy, Advertising Director, Food Category, Naples Daily News; Shawna Devlin, Advertising Director, Naples Daily News; and Kurt Larson, Creative Designer, Centro.
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Keywords
ad network, mobile, CentroLift, Naples Daily News, NaplesNews.com, advertising, restaurants
