Kellanova — the proprietor of Kellogg’s, Pringles and Pop-Tarts — is the newest agency to show to AI tech to tune up its artistic advertising and marketing efforts, Digiday has realized.
Kellanova has been working with artistic know-how agency Vidmob and business affiliation MMA International to measure the effectiveness of artistic deployed on Meta advert models, utilizing an AI-enabled answer to higher perceive which of its artistic belongings caught the eyes of shoppers and which went underneath the radar.
It’s now utilizing the findings to tighten up its artistic manufacturing — and alter its industrial relationships with artistic businesses.
The mission is the newest instance of a serious advertiser utilizing AI to operationalize the artistic aspect of its advertising and marketing efforts. Whereas Unilever and Kimberly-Clark have pioneered time and cost-saving initiatives, Kellanova’s executives are utilizing the tech to pursue an answer to the age-old Wanamaker downside.
“AI is not only an effectivity unlock, it’s an effectiveness unlock,” stated Nicole Vinson, vp, international digital, media and omni-shopper expertise at Kellanova.
The promise of larger effectiveness is a tempting one for CMOs and entrepreneurs coping with long-term declines in advertising and marketing and media budgets. In line with Gartner, advertising and marketing budgets account for 7.7% of common U.S. firm revenues in 2025, down from 11% in 2020; Kellanova’s international advertising and marketing spend ran to $611 million in 2024, down from $766 million in 2023, in accordance with its full-year outcomes.
What has Kellanova carried out?
The CPG large spent 12 months testing the efficiency of 443 artistic belongings throughout 10 manufacturers, together with Rice Krispies Treats, Pringles, Cheez-It, Pop-Tarts and Kellogg’s, within the U.S. utilizing Vidmob’s Aperture answer, which depends on machine-learning, historic information and LLMs like Google’s Gemini.
The examine established 19 scoring standards relating to repeat, brand placement, tone, narrative, pacing and product placement — frequent to belongings that achieved at the least a three-second view-through-rate on Meta advert models — and constructed two predictive fashions (one for salty merchandise and one for candy) that can be utilized to anticipate the artistic effectiveness of latest belongings, greenlighting them in the event that they cross a predetermined rating.
“If you may get any person to concentrate for at the least three seconds, you’ve began to catch their consideration,” defined Vinson. The predictive fashions forecast the VTR of a given asset with 83% accuracy; deploying that system to artistic belongings has since led to efficiency towards VTR doubling, whereas Vinson stated that revenue ROI (additionally referred to as internet gross sales quantity) for scored belongings has risen 11%, primarily based on media combine modelling.
Vinson stated it wasn’t but clear how these outcomes would affect its paid social spending, however following the mission’s completion Kellanova is within the means of rolling out its effectiveness frameworks to extra manufacturers, extra channels and markets past the U.S., starting with TikTok, Pinterest and Reddit.
“This can be a large alternative for us to be unlocking revenue ROI after which reinvesting that again into our enterprise,” she stated.
There’s parallels between the Pringles proprietor’s initiative and Unilever’s in-house gen AI manufacturing suite, which additionally included pre-flight effectiveness checks. In Unilever’s case, that was supplied by Brandtech Group’s Pencil Professional platform, additionally utilized by Danone. The options supply a speedy substitute for a previously labor-intensive job and permit future campaigns to be higher knowledgeable by previous efficiency, “closing the loop between the information and what’s being made,” stated Will Hanschell, Pencil’s CEO and co-founder.
CreativeX, in the meantime, constructed an identical pre-flight artistic effectiveness system for Mars, Diageo and Nivea proprietor Beiersdorf. These developments are an indication of the rising maturity of generative AI functions, famous Dale Um, CreativeX’s COO. “There was no approach you might have carried out this 10 years in the past,” he stated.
However this isn’t nearly AI improvement. Previously yr we’ve additionally noticed rising funding in artistic effectiveness measurement companies like System1 and EDO. Behind the software program, it’s clear there’s demand amongst CMOs for information that helps justify their advertising and marketing spend to the remainder of the C-suite.
“We’re lastly seeing [the] skill for AI to assist groups develop artistic and take a look at it earlier than they’re spending an exponentially massive amount of cash to place it into flight,” stated Gartner analyst Nicole Greene.
What does this imply for businesses?
Kellanova’s system inevitably holds penalties for its company companions, which embrace FCB, The Martin Company, MullenLowe, Tombras, Momentum and several other Publicis businesses. Entrepreneurs make use of businesses for the expertise and good style of their artistic administrators and copywriters. Now, execs like Vinson can use Vidmob’s predictive fashions to again up their very own opinions concerning the artistic work they’re offered with.
In the interim, Kellanova’s effectiveness method is barely being utilized to paid social, an promoting channel outlined by a excessive amount of belongings, every bearing minor variations in service of personalization. Alex Collmer, the founder and CEO of Vidmob, argued that the answer wasn’t supposed to limit businesses’ work, however present one other layer of high quality management to a manufacturing course of which might show mechanical, repetitive and time-consuming.
“That is actually not supposed to restrict the artistic canvas,” he stated. “It’s a tactical factor.”
Kellanova is utilizing the predictive answer as an excuse to look once more at company remuneration, nevertheless. She stated the corporate was shifting towards an output primarily based pricing system with a few of its businesses. “We wish our company companions to have pores and skin within the recreation,” she stated, explaining {that a} portion of every businesses’ bonus payment was tied to artistic efficiency — now primarily based partly upon the effectiveness measurement mission undertaken with Vidmob.
“Now we have now a quantitative metric versus a subjective metric,” Vinson defined, however she declined to share the exact monetary particulars of the brand new preparations. “We’re not making an attempt to grade anybody’s homework … We’re making an attempt to maneuver ourselves in a route the place we’re not leaving any cash on the desk.”
She’s not alone in that ambition. 87% of entrepreneurs consider businesses are immune to extra clear payment fashions, in accordance with a WFA examine printed at first of the yr.
Business analysts already consider that extra massive advertisers may use AI artistic strategies as an excuse to evaluation company pricing agreements. “It’s going to turn out to be a serious speaking level,” Bruce Biegel, senior managing associate at Winterberry Group, informed Digiday lately.
“The present company mannequin is simply not sustainable with the longer term influence of synthetic intelligence and notably agentic AI,” cautioned Greene. “They’re going to want to higher align their work to particular enterprise outcomes because of this.”
