• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, October 16, 2006

In another example of an e-tailer turning publisher, Home Depot will begin carrying ads for Ford Motor Co. on its e-commerce site, Online Media Daily has learned. The buy, which will begin this quarter, is part of a bigger push by Ford, which is shifting more of its overall marketing budget online.

"The Internet is a more and more important part of our marketing," a Ford spokesman confirmed.

Home Depot is one of a handful of retailers to recently start selling ad inventory on its e-commerce site. Home Depot began offering ad space on its site in July, with plumbing supply company Moen as the inaugural advertiser.

Wal-Mart also recently announced it would start selling online ads on its e-commerce site, and earlier this year eBay and Yahoo reached an agreement for Yahoo to send graphic and pay-per-click ads on the auction site.

HomeDepot earlier this year tapped SendTec to sell ads on the site. SendTec President Eric Obeck said he expects several other marketers to join Ford on HomeDepot.com in the next several months. He said a major advantage to advertising on an e-commerce site is that most visitors tend to have the financial resources to make purchases. "These are credit card-carrying people," he said. "An advertiser feels much better about that, I would think, than somebody on Facebook or MySpace."

For Ford, the online ad buy marks a continuation of a promotional deal between the auto manufacturer and Home Depot that launched last year. To promote its pickup trucks, consumers who bought or leased a new Ford pickup truck in the summer of 2005 also received a package of goods from Home Depot valued at almost $900.