Kellogg Dishes Up Offline Sales With Programmatic Buying

Kellogg Company has produced some of the world's most trusted food brands for more than a century. To reach its constantly connected consumers, the company realized it needed to look beyond traditional marketing channels. So, Kellogg embraced programmatic buying, specifically Google's DoubleClick Bid Manager, to stay at the forefront of changing consumer behavior. With Google's programmatic buying and measurement solutions, it has increased viewability rates to over 70% and improved targeting by 2-€“3X.

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Using programmatic buying to power digital success

Kellogg Company is a century-old marketer with some of the world's most trusted brands. Kellogg's vision is to enrich and delight the world through foods and brands that matter, and digital marketing plays a key role in helping them move consumers through the path of purchase. The cereal powerhouse uses programmatic buying with the DoubleClick Digital Marketing platform to gain a holistic view of the consumer, deliver the right message to the right person and ensure that its digital marketing efforts deliver maximum effectiveness.

Delivering the right message with data and technology

Kellogg recognizes that traditional marketing channels often aren't enough to reach consumers in today's digital age. "People are using digital devices 24/7, from the time they wake up to the time they go to bed and every time in between. We need to be there," says Jim Kiszka, senior manager, digital strategy, Kellogg North America.

Kellogg embraced programmatic buying as a key part of its digital strategy to stay at the forefront of changing consumer behavior. And for this, a key partner for the company has been DoubleClick Bid Manager, Google's demand-side platform (DSP), which helps agencies and marketers buy display media more effectively and efficiently, across screens and channels, in real time.

With every impression it buys, Kellogg wants to reach, measure, and understand who saw its ad. "But it's not enough just to capture all that data," Kiszka adds. "We also want to be able to glean insights from it. As we put all of these pieces together, we're finding that we really can move the needle."

"Programmatic buying has played a significant role in our digital marketing strategy," adds Aaron Fetters, director of Kellogg's Insight and Analytics Solution Center. "It's an opportunity to drive further success in our core metrics for digital advertising, and to use data and technology to deliver our message to the target audience."

Kellogg began investing in programmatic buying as an efficient way to purchase media but soon found that it was an effective way to reach its loyal consumers as well.

Measuring what matters

Formulating the right key performance indicators (KPIs) for its digital marketing campaigns was vital for Kellogg to reach its goal of driving offline sales. And for this, the right digital measurement tools were critical. Kellogg's three main KPIs were viewability, targeting index, and frequency. Viewability measures whether an ad was actually seen by a consumer—a metric vital for Kellogg's branding goals, because if a digital ad isn't seen, the marketing efforts are wasted. DoubleClick Active View and comScore Validated Campaign Essentials are used to track the company's ads' viewability rates and to optimize towards campaign goals.

Over time, Kellogg was able to validate that its campaign KPI metrics were a key indicator leading to offline sales and effective marketing spend. The cereal company partnered with DoubleClick to leverage powerful audience and contextual data as well as robust optimization capabilities to deliver against its KPIs. "DoubleClick has helped us understand a lot about ourselves and the media we're buying," Kiszka says.

Gaining efficiency and effectiveness

With the programmatic buying and measurement solutions from DoubleClick, Kellogg's viewability rate increased to more than 70 percent. "It's amazing the impact you can have on a measurement such as viewability when you focus on it, plan for it, and optimize for it," Fetters says.

DoubleClick solutions have helped Kellogg refine the targeting and frequency of its digital campaigns. The food company is now two to three times better at ensuring that its impressions go directly to the consumers they most want to reach.

Kellogg is confident that with DoubleClick they're reaching the right consumer and that they're targeting and managing their ads more effectively. "The role of programmatic in building our brands is very clear to us, and we have largely executed the plan in recent years," says Jon Suarez-Davis, vice president, global media and digital strategy, Kellogg Company. "It has given us the data and confidence to know that programmatic buying is an efficient and effective way to engage our consumers."