If you are an active visitor of websites that you usually clear from your browser history afterwards, there’s a fair chance that you would have come across some notoriously delicious pictures of food recently. That’s Zomato targeting the hungry you. (literally)
Zomato explains:
The goal was clear – get people to click. Our strategy for this was fairly straightforward, too – create something that’ll take people’s eyes off the video, they’ll click the banner because they’re (obviously) getting hungry now, and then they’ll order online on Zomato.
We ran these ads on desktop and mobile sites, between 11 pm and 4 am – when late-night delivery restaurants are at their busiest.
Results? From Zomato’s blog:
This smart marketing move has taken the internet by storm. In past, Foodpanda has time and now made its way on the home page of some famous porn sites too. We bring you the famous case study of Eat 24, a food-delivery app that tried the tactic early in 2013.
Food-delivery app Eat24 had written a lengthy blog post detailing, from start to finish, why and how it went “where no marketing team has gone before. Well, at least not without clearing their browser history afterwards”. The idea was born in the brains of marketing team of the non-funded company trying to get conversion with as little investment.
Eat24, which apparently had something of a following among porn stars already, decided to advertise on adult websites. Its rationale? Almost no mainstream brands want anything to do with the XXX world. And yet the traffic figures are through the roof, and the CPMs are low. What’s not to like?
Below are the major highlights of the campaign.Here’s the whole thing.
The idea:
“If you ever take two seconds out of your naughty time to glance at the ads on porn sites, you’ll notice that 99% of them are for more porn. It’s a world where no one besides male enhancement pills and adult friend finders have dared to go. Not a single mainstream brand advertising there. We could be that 1%.”
The creative:
“We wanted to make a connection between the pleasure you feel when eating a bacon double cheeseburger, and the pleasure of having sex. Everyone knows nothing makes people want to order food more than pictures of food, but we had to be careful with our dish selection. The sight of a seductive salmon skin roll next to a naughty nurse video might enhance the whole experience, while a hearty plate of chicken tikka masala might turn you off entirely, except in certain fetish categories. We need food that puts you in the mood.”
Placement on the creatives:
Our test quickly revealed that five times as many people clicked our banner when it was placed next to the video itself. FIVE times! We assume this is due to the fact that people landing on the homepage of a porn site only have one thing on their minds, and it’s not double stuffed burritos. They want to get down and dirty ASAP. Once users find a video that really butters their biscuit, they stay for a while. Even if their focus is on what’s happening in the larger screen, subliminally, they’re thinking about sandwiches. Plus, after they’re done with the video, they’ve worked up an appetite. It’s the perfect time to remind them to wash their hands and order a large pizza with extra bacon for delivery.
The results:
“No matter what metric you want to use to define success, our campaign kicked ass all the way across the board. Impressions? Our porn banner ads saw three times the impressions of ads we ran on Google, Twitter and Facebook combined. Click through? Tens of thousands of horngry Americans clicked our ads. Yeah, but did they convert? Psshhh, please. We saw a huge spike in orders and app downloads during the time our ads were live, especially late at night when that insatiable desire for DP (double pepperoni) is at its most intense.
Did we mention the cost? We did? Well, it bears repeating. We were able to achieve the stellar metrics mentioned above all for the low low price of 90% less than what the big guys charge per 1,000 impressions. That’s right, we saved 90%. Nine zero.”
With this, we are done describing the Burrito we just ate. 😉
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