Call it an opportunity to educate consumers or a means to improve relations with an important retail customer. Whatever you call it, there is little doubt that Home Depot's decision to sell advertising space on its Web site will provide the company with another revenue stream while offering manufacturers the opportunity to reach a large and targeted audience.
"Advertising on homedepot.com is a new offering in the online landscape," said Harvey Seegers, president of Home Depot Direct, in a company press release. "Our goal is to allow a few key vendor partners the opportunity to educate millions of home improvement consumers about their distinctive and innovative products."
One of those vendors is Moen Incorporated. Kelly Atkins, director of marketing at Moen, said, Advertising on homedepot.com gives us the opportunity to highlight features of our new faucets and finishes to The Home Depot customers who are looking to remodel or replace their kitchen or bath fixtures. We see it as just one more way that The Home Depot continues to provide its customers with the information they need."
According to an information area on the new program, http://www.sendtec.com/thdbrandedmedia/, the Home Depot Web site receives over 10,000 unique monthly visitors and has an email subscriber list of six million. According to Hit Wise, homedepot.com draws the most traffic of any Web site in the Home and Garden category.
Home Depot will provide manufacturers with a number of advertising options to reach consumers including placement on the home page, shop by category, know-how, store finder, rebate center, and weekly promotional emails.
The DIY retailer did not list pricing for its advertising options but said cost would depend on page position, size and cost-per-thousand (CPM) impressions served.
Discussion Questions: What is your reaction to Home Depot's Web site advertising program for its vendors? Will the practice of selling ad space to manufacturers become commonplace on retailer Web sites?