Interesting move for travel guide site Simonseeks as it looks to raise its profile with a hefty TV advertising campaign, launching in the UK over the Christmas break.
The 18-month old website will splash out £2 million on a regional and then national campaign on the largest commercial terrestrial channel in the UK, ITV1, kicking off in the North West on Boxing Day and then elsewhere around the country during 2011.
The idea behind the campaign is to focus on the expert writers involved in the site.
The decision to go with an above-the-line and expensive TV ad campaign shouldn't come as a big surprise, despite it probably being the first so-called content or guide site to run a high profile programme for many years.
Founder Simon Nixon famously backed a TV advertising campaign for metasearch TravelSupermarket, a move which surprised many at the time but suited part of a wider profile raising exercise for parent company MoneySupermarket's move to an IPO in 2007.
Earlier this year Simonseeks confirmed it had spent around £1 million getting the site up and running and a further £100,000 every month thereafter.
Nixon's brother Chris (also former managing director of TravelSupermarket) left the company in August 2010, claiming he was looking at "various opportunities" elsewhere.
Nevertheless, the decision to launch a high profile media campaign will no doubt stir the comment boards once again as the Simonseeks proposition has not been universally popular with the travel writers it was hoping to attract.