CPG giant Mondelēz International, which made waves in the ad industry earlier this year by owning its deal with video demand-side platform TubeMogul, has entered another agreement designed to enhance its online video investments: a partnership with Google covering markets in North America, Europe and emerging markets in Eastern Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and Asia Pacific.
The agreement includes an “advertising commitment,” according to a press release, as well as an initiative to create video content through YouTube’s Brand Partner Program.
As with its TubeMogul deal, Mondelēz is again taking ownership of the contract, which was brokered with an assist by agency Starcom MediaVest.
While Mondelēz has worked with Google in the past, this deal “solidifies [the] partnership,” said B. Bonin Bough, Mondelēz’s VP of global media and consumer engagement.
A Google spokesperson said the deal “is really focused on helping Mondelēz be successful on Google on YouTube.”
Specifically, the partnership will bring Google into Mondelēz’s advertising ecosystem, Bough said, letting the CPG company directly tap Google’s consumer insight, tracking and measurement know-how.
“It’s one thing to have access to the tools,” Bough said. “It’s another thing to have access to the mind. This will help us think about how we integrate [Google] into our systems holistically.”
The Google relationship, which Bough described in a press release as Mondelēz’s “largest in digital media so far,” ultimately extends the CPG company’s online video advertising presence and complements its TubeMogul deal.
TubeMogul is Mondelēz’s “data backbone play,” Bough said, giving the company insight into how to use data to buy programmatically and how to capture the data it gets from those initiatives. TubeMogul also operates as an exchange. It provides Mondelēz with Google video inventory, which it buys through the tech giant’s exchange, and it also provides access to online video inventory beyond Google.
Essentially, TubeMogul is supposed to help Mondelēz accelerate growth in a channel that delivers high ROI.
“In looking at the global deal with Google, it’s about understanding how much investment we should be putting toward this channel,” Bough said. “And, as a result, what other opportunities does being a spender with Google provide us in terms of helping us build capability?”
A close Google relationship, Mondelēz anticipates, will help it master video advertising and become smarter at video creation.
“Because [Google is] the largest of these players and they operate on a global basis all over the world, they can help train, educate and put in place infrastructure from a capability-building standpoint at a scale nobody else can,” Bough said.
The end game, for Mondelēz, is to nurture the global growth of its nine billion-dollar “power brands,” a portfolio that includes Cadbury, Nabisco, Oreo and Trident gum. Mondelēz also has 53 other brands generating annual revenues of over $100 million.
