V-Day: Advertisers Say Men Better Give than Receive
- by February 8, 2001
From January 1 - February 7, Leading Web Advertisers (LWA) monitored Valentine's Day online ads of some of the most prestigious companies including Sephora.com, De Beers, FTD Florists, Godiva Chocolatier, Tiffany & Co., Victoria's Secret and Zales, and found that online advertising is not only healthy, but predominantly targeted at men only.
LWA discovered that Sephora.com, a leading cosmetic and perfume site, posted the most advertising of all Valentine's sites, with 167% more advertising than De Beers, which had the second most number of ads on the Web. Interestingly, 99% of Sephora's ads were found on the music site MP3.com.
According to LWA, 95% of De Beers 1183 ads were placed on the popular men's lifestyle site Maxim Online - which may reflect the two companies' marketing partnership. In January, Maxim Online and adiamondisforever.com launched the "A Decent Proposal" channel at Maxim Online, which gives men a crash course in understanding diamonds, shopping tips and more.
Godiva Chocolatier, probably the most revered of gourmet chocolate companies, drove in a slightly different direction when posting its Valentine's ads on the Internet. LWA discovered that 37% of Godiva's ads appeared on the Car and Driver website. Thirty percent of its remaining ads went to such popular web sites as Lycos, Yahoo! and Netscape.
According to LWA, Tiffany and Co. turned to the New York Times website to post all of their advertising. Comparably, Zales had sparse advertising spread across four sites including: Lycos, Compuserve, uBid.com and Excite.
Victoria's Secret rated fifth in the amount of Web advertising, with 257 online ads, according to LWA. CNN-related sites, including CNNSI (CNN Sports Illustrated), portrayed the most amount of Victoria's Secret ads - approximately 40% overall.
Flowers, the staple gift of Valentine's, found FTD, the florist delivery service, spreading ads on more than 10 popular sites in multiple categories. However, LWA found that 75% of its 910 ads appeared on egreetings.com.
LWA also discovered that while advertisers are heavily peddling all things romantic for women on men's magazine sites such as Maxim Online, Men's Health, FHM US (For Him Magazine) and Esquire, there's slim advertising for men gifts on women's sites like Glamour, Mademoiselle, Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire. Sorry guys; as far as advertisers are concerned, this Valentine's day it's better to give than to receive.
