Google does many important things. But it’s an ad company, including helping these three companies build their direct selling online. Here’s an excerpt from the trade publication QSR:
“We’ve been working with the big three pizza companies over the last three to four years to develop online ordering, and it has become a significant sales engine for them,” says Sam Sebastian, director of local and business-to-business markets at search engine giant Google. “It’s such a competitive space.”
Online ordering typically accounts for anywhere from five to 20 percent of a national pizza chain’s business, Sebastian says. To entice customers to use their service over that of the competition, chains are turning to online search advertising, banner and click-through ads placed on Web sites, and social media sites such as YouTube, Facebook, and MySpace.
So far, online search advertising, whereby a company buys ad space that will appear when a user types a keyword or phrase (“New York City pizza”, for example) into a search engine, has made up the largest portion of media spending online.
…”It’s a direct connection, direct response,” Sebastian says….
Web sites across Google’s content network partner with the company to syndicate advertisements, and Google works with individual web sites and companies to broker advertising.
“If I know my customers are on … any web site where in the content there is a discussion about pizza, I can place my advertising there so it’s available contextually,” Sebastian says.
Papa John’s recently launched its first foray into advertising on the Google Content Network with a one-day blitz of display ads on various sites including MySpace, and restaurant and menu guide site MenuPages.com.
The flash display ads promoted an offer of one free medium cheese pizza with any online pizza purchase for customers who signed up to receive e-mail offers…
