Think online marketing is only for hip tech products and cool brands targeted at web-savvy youth? Not true, reports AdAge today. In fact, branded sites for packaged goods like rice and breakfast cereal have seen a surge in traffic in the last year:
Staid old supermarket staples, once scoffed at as laggards in digital media, are charging online at an unprecedented pace — and their efforts are being rewarded: Traffic to industry websites in the past year has grown twice as fast as the U.S. internet population.
Take good, old Uncle Ben’s for example:
Mars’ Uncle Ben’s site… cracked the industry’s top 10 last quarter, according to ComScore… primarily by using targeted banner ads on Oprah.com and FoodNetwork.com. They generated nearly 2 million of the 3.6 million visits the site received in the third quarter. UncleBens.com traffic surged more than 1,700% from a year ago.
Some of the sites are sure to stir controversy as they promote unhealthy, sugar laden products to kids. “Food marketers who’ve largely withdrawn from child-oriented TV programming are finding plenty of children are willing to follow their brands to the web,” Ad Age notes.
The wholesomeness of these specific sites aside, the new numbers from ComScore underline that, with a little creativity, even old-fashioned brands can succeed online.
