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Aston Martin, Burberry advertise via new luxury-targeted ad network

December 21, 2010

Burberry ad units on the Fashion Copious blog

Aston Martin and Burberry are engaging potential shoppers with rich-media ad units served across highly specialized verticals on a new ad network targeted specifically at affluent consumers.

Ads from both British brands featured Flash and engaging video content. The ad network was created as part of a partnership between Martini Media and TDP Media, who boast that it reaches more than 60 million consumers with average annual incomes greater than $100,000 through 1,400 Web sites.

“Really, it’s the perfect storm, because the more money you make, the more time you spend online,” said Skip Brand, CEO of Martini Media, San Francisco. “Individuals with household incomes of $250,000 and up are on the Internet up to 34 hours a week, the best of any demographic.”

Martini Media specializes in developing video advertising campaigns for upscale brands, while TDP Media has two networks, The Digital Partnership and Affluent Digital Media, catered to business-to-business and business-to-consumer marketing, respectively.

Burberry and Aston Martin
Burberry made a buy on the network that included placement in the fashion vertica. Its campaign included multiple ads such as 300×250-pixel and 720×90-pixel units that appeared on the blog Fashion Copious.

Burberry ads on Fashion Copious blog

The 720×90-pixel ad expands into a larger unit with a video player embedded that shows a clip from Burberry’s holiday 2010 campaign.

Burberry expandable ad

Meanwhile, the 320×250-pixel ad shifts between blue-and-white visuals of Burberry bags sitting in snow and copy that reads “Burberry Gifts for the Season.”

Consumers who click through the ads are routed to Burberry’s Web site.

Meanwhile, Aston Martin placed a 300×600-pixel rich-media ad unit on sites in the sports and classic cars vertical of the network on sites such as Sports Car Digest.

Aston Martin rich-media ad unit on Sports Car Digest

The ad features an image of the British automaker’s Rapide vehicle sitting above a short video of the sports car charging down various roads and bridges.

Users who click through from the ad reach a landing page where they can sign up for a test drive.

The page also includes a video of the Rapide in action.

Aston Martin landing page

Other advertises on the network are Marc Jacobs, Porsche and Jaguar.

Mr. Brand said that about 50 percent of all inventory served on its network are rich-media ads.

Trans-Atlantic reach
Martini and TDP said this partnership was the first step in developing a global network of affluent-targeted publishers.

The network claims to reach 90 percent of the affluent business decision-maker audience in the United States and Britain.

The network includes business-to-business and business-to-consumer verticals targeted at successfully, high-earning professionals across a variety of industries.

Some business-to-business categories are health, finance, legal and energy.

Meanwhile, business-to-consumer categories include sports and classic cars, lifestyle, sailing, arts/culture, travel, auto/technology, fashion and news/finance.

Verticals include both professional Web sites and popular blogs.

The categories all feature millions of affluent consumers, according to Martini Media.

For example, the arts and culture channel engages 24.2 million unique visitors, compared to travel’s 8.1 million consumers and fashion’s 6.9 million upscale Internet users.

Ads are served based on contextual and demographic targeting, which combine business data, behavioral targeting, conquest targeting that allows brands to buy up inventory on pages where competitors are featured, contextual targeting and social graph targeting.

Mr. Brand said the creation of an affluent-targeted ad network was facilitated by the rapid growth in Web usage in the demographic over the past 10 years.

“Affluent consumers were once not thought of as the most important audience online,” Mr. Brand said. “But they are the most engaging audience and a group highly advanced with technology, moving from last to first place in terms of Web usage.

“It’s fun to see the changes going from lagging edge to leading edge,” he said.

Final Take
Burberry video ad running as rich-media inventory on ad network