As we sit waiting for our chicken to marinate, watching the Olympics, drinking wine, debating how long we can wait for full marination before our hunger takes over, and engaging in other couch related activities, we decided to explore the wonderful world of vacu-seal marinade contraptions.
Starting with a google search, and moving on to Amazon reviews, I stumbled on a company called VacuVin, ready to buy anything they were peddling. Any product that promises to do to chicken in 20 minutes what normally takes hours to do (namely, to turn my bland chicken thighs into succulent thighs of flavored goodness) is a tool I want in my cooking arsenal.
As a consumer, I am at the point where I’m ready for VacuVin to plow me with their wares. I’m at that impulse buy moment that every brand marketer dreams of. I’m ready. I’m willing. And I’m credit card enabled. Like a 2 pack a day smoker getting off a trans-atlantic flight, I’m jonesing for a vacu-sealer. My thighs deserve flavor!
Once on the VacuVin site, ready to explore their various product lines, I quickly became confused. What left me scratching my head were the google ads VacuVin displayed on their site combined with the lack of links to learn about or purchase their products.
My guess is that VacuVin does not get a lot of traffic. Now, I’m no retail expert, but if i’m a product company, trying to sell my wares, and I have a trickle of foot traffic coming through my front door, why on earth would I embed google ads on my site? For the $12 in monthly revenue it may contribute to the bottom line?!?
Let google search my site, determine the most appropriate ads to display based on the content of my pages, and then send every site visitor off to my arch nemesis to purchase their vacu-sealer.
To top it off, I won’t even (or I’ll forget to) display my own wares on my site. That is less important than the $12 I can earn from Google by displaying links to my competitors.
Total cost to my arch nemesis to steal a customer from right under my nose that is clearly on my site only because they want to buy a vacu-sealer: $0.28. I think MasterCard calls that priceless.
I like that VacuVin maximizes their ad space by running competitor ads not just in the main content area, but on the side nav as well. Just in case site visitors don’t see the first wave of competitor ads, they won’t miss the side nav redux. Every square inch of the site is maximized…not a single ad opportunity missed!
