• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, December 9, 2008

Papa John's launched a one-day Web campaign with a display ad on Google last Friday that resulted in online weekend sales that were up between 15% and 20% over a typical weekend, the pizza giant says. Mobile orders also rose.

The ads ran on MySpace, NHL.com, menupages.com and other entertainment, food, news, sports and game sites promoting a free medium-size cheese pizza to anyone registering to receive Papa John's emails.

Friday, the night when pizza orders are highest, became the test bed for Papa John's to try out the Google display ad network. "You can gain efficiencies in one-day road blocks," says Bob Ford, Papa John's director of digital marketing. "If you cast a really wide net over a series of days, it can become cost-prohibitive."

The Louisville, Ky.-based company used the Google Content Network to place display ads, rather than the text ads more traditionally associated with Google advertisers.

Online order tickets are typically 10% to 15% higher than phone orders. Ford attributes that to consumers having an option to browse the full menu on the Web site. Papa John's also expects a rise in operational efficiencies from online orders as a result of fewer phone calls coming into the stores. It allows managers to reassign workers to do other tasks, such as making pizzas, which speeds deliveries.

One-day campaigns are rather new. "We are starting to see more of these takeovers, whether it's a one-day blitz, or a weekend promotion where the goal is mass reach," says Sam Sebastian, Google's industry director of classifieds and local. "We also see tie-ins on YouTube, where companies run a home page ad, which gets huge impressions and reach in 24 hours. Also, when you complement a search campaign with display ads, companies see nice lift in search, more search volume and better search conversion."

As the competition for customers has increased, pizza marketing has become increasingly technical. For example, Pizza Hut recently unveiled a Facebook application that facilitates online ordering, and Dominos recently announced a system allowing TiVo customers to order through their set-top boxes.

Fueling online sales, Papa John's ran a buy-one-get-one-free offer on Facebook that for one week through Dec. 1. Users who friended Papa John's received a code for a free medium cheese pizza with any PapaJohns.com pizza order. When Papa John's announced the promotion on Nov. 17, it had 10,302 Facebook fans, rising to 152,000 within two days. Fans continue to sign up even after the promotion. As of Dec. 8, Papa John's had 186,981 friends.

Stay tuned for a mobile display campaign, too, Ford says, in late December or early January. In July, Papa John's introduced a Mobile Web app that allows consumers to place orders from smart phones. On Cyber Monday, when online retailers offer Web surfers holiday shopping bargains, the pizza place introduced a new iPhone application to its suite of digital widgets with optimized menus, entry fields and graphics, and a store locator linked to Google maps.

Since moving marketing online in 2001, Papa John's has developed a way to let people place orders up to 21 days in advance. It also added a "Repeat Last Order" function and the ability to let customers save their most frequent menu combinations. U.S. customers who set up their favorite orders at papajohns.com can order via SMS messages.