How Kellogg’s partners with publishers on programmatic

By Tanya Dua • May 14, 2015 •

Programmatic has brought in efficiency, effectiveness and scale to the online advertising ecosystem. And while brands and publishers are taking advantage of programmatic buying to work with the partners they choose, working with each other is not always a smooth process.

Speaking at the Digiday Programmatic Summit in Austin, Texas yesterday, senior manager of paid digital media at Kellogg’s North America, Jim Kiszka, said that clarity regarding the goals and transparency was key for both brands and publishers to benefit from these partnerships.

“The biggest problem, I would imagine for publishers, it’s really brands who come in and don’t understand what they want and what they need,” he said, speaking to Meredith Corporation’s vp of programmatic sales & strategy, Chip Schneck.“Do you value digital media, do you understand what it’s doing for your business? What do you need?”

He acknowledged that a lot of brands just dipping their feet into programmatic may not exactly have all the answers to what value they’re looking for. But the key, he said, was to have a roadmap or measurement to get to the answers. “Otherwise, you’re just buying stuff all day long,” he added.

Kellogg’s devoted a lot of effort in setting up a baseline of a lot of media, a lot of measurement and a framework for why they have the KPIs that they do. “We’re not just asking for viewability because we read it in an article at some point, we kind of wrote the book for ourselves internally. Every additional five percent of viewability drives x number ROI,” he said. “And that’s why we hold it so dear and so true, because we’ve seen the difference.”

Ultimately, publishers and brands can work well together if they are transparent with one another, according to Kiszka. It’s not just tracking sales against the cookie, but what additional insights those publishers’ cookies can provide to the brands about their target consumers.

“Was it really all about cooking or lifestyle or how to potty train your kid? Whatever it is, that is really key,” he said.

Similarly, he said, brands should also be forthcoming in providing more information to their publisher partners, be it comScore data or mobile data. “You have to trust. Trust is the key thing,” he said. “Why are you partnering with them if you don’t trust them from the get go?”

See the video below: