Home Depot goes into the ad business

According to an item in Ad Week, Home Depot is starting to sell ads on its website to home improvement suppliers (Moen faucets has already signed on). What's being sold by the Home Depot Direct division is access to 4 million visitors a week to the website and more than 6 million subscribers to various Home Depot specialty newsletters.

This is yet another example of the complicated nature of the advertising mix these days as traditional magazine advertisers essentially also compete with consumer and trade magazines as a delivery vehicle. Visitors can click on ads and be taken directly to suppliers' own branded sites. And it would be a very brave supplier who didn't see it in his best interests to buy into such an arrangement.