Today’s AdExchanger roundup highlighted a great presentation by Bob Arnold of Kellogg Company. His talk was on brand marketing via programmatic buying. We obviously hear a lot about programmatic buying (primarily RTB) for DR campaigns, but this is a great reminder that we’ve still just scratched the surface of what programmatic buying can offer.
First of all, there’s much more that can be done with RTB to help brands increase efficiency. Given the size of Brand budgets, this is a big (huge) area for growth. Bob shares some great case examples from Kellogg’s experience:
1) Having the right measurement framework is critical. Bob’s not talking about CPA and conversion attribution here. He’s driving long-term changes in purchase behavior through an offline channel. So he divides metrics into short-term (brand safety, viewability, composition and frequency), mid-term (attitudinal lifts like awareness and purchase intent) and long-term (offline sales lift as measured by Marketing Mix Models). This is all stuff I’ve discussed before, but we in the tech community can’t hear it too often and it’s particularly great to hear it from a big marketer explicitly in the context of RTB. Nielsen for one is listening. They already had a big presence in the first and last buckets, and they recently doubled down on the middle with their Vizu acquisition. Vizu and Nielsen work great together, so this is a very smart deal.
2) Creative is fundamental. In Bob’s words: “Creative quality is paramount…the media plan simply amplifies the creative message. Studies from comScore and Dynamic Logic [show that] 50-80% of the value of a branding campaign comes from the creative…it’s imperative you get that right.” Great creative is altogether too rare online, but there are some great examples out there, like this one. This ad made me stop and think. And the more I thought, the more it took me away. I will remember it and it will make me more likely to buy Legos for my kids. Bob’s comments and creative like this are a reminder that while advertising – the activity – will be an increasingly technical pursuit for the foreseeable future, the best advertising – the thing – will continue to be driven by great creative that leverages this technology to connect people with products in a way that creates a lasting impression.
3) Doing it right drives great results. Bob claimed that programmatic buying for Kellogg doubled targeting accuracy while increasing viewability to >70% (higher than direct buys). It also cut eCPM (CPM adjusted by comp & viewability) by >50% from their starting reference point. The combination of these factors (assuming creative was comparable before and after) drove improvements in ROI (via MMM) by ~5X. Just a stunning impact.
These examples demonstrate the power of RTB, in the hands of a savvy marketer, to drive Brand results. Good news for all of us.
But I also want to point out that there’s more to programmatic buying than RTB. There’s a whole set of programmatic premium, automated reserve (or whatever else you want to call it) capabilities possible on which the ecosystem as a whole as has barely scratched the surface. A couple of the pioneers in this area include Brand.net and isocket, but I assure you there will be other, larger players down this path after them. These next-gen programmatic capabilities are a great complement to the current set of RTB capabilities and they are tailor-made for branding.
It’s exciting to see a large marketer smartly leveraging the available technology in a new way to drive such great results. It will be even more exciting to see what’s possible as the market begins to deliver more technology focused on this important class of use cases.
Andy's Blog 
The industry needs more great examples like Kellogg’s to release the fear and move the needle on automated buying AND selling. Fear among top publishers remains — how do they expose inventory while still maintain premium pricing? As smart brands, especially retail, begin to experiment, test and measure, this things can’t help but snowball. Thanks for your focus on this — more of same!
(Andy, thanks for the shout out) Melinda, I’m actually talking about that very topic at your Digiday Exchange event in a month =) One of the keys is for publishers to proactively define what they want to sell and for how much, rather than throwing it in a spot pool of junk.
Although I do disagree with parts of the Kellogg examples – great they don’t focus on clicks, bu the “bargain basement CPMs” thing isn’t healthy.
– John, Founder of isocket
Thanks for sharing. Interesting stuff. Hope all is well.