FDBusiness.com

Mondelez International, the world’s pre-eminent maker of chocolate, biscuits, gum and candy, has signed a global agreement with Google, focusing on online video. This is part of the company’s strategy to invest more of its media spending in digital and, in particular, online video. Globally, the company has committed to shifting 10% of its ad budgets to online video in 2014.

“We believe video will be a key growth driver for our brands, and programmatic buying will play an important role in accelerating that growth,” says Bonin Bough, Vice President of Global Media and Consumer Engagement at Mondelez International. “Today, 58 percent of consumers turn to digital platforms for their daily media consumption. Although we’ve adjusted our media spending to reflect that behavior, there’s still a gap. The deal with Google will enable us to close that ‘digital divide.’ This new agreement is our largest in digital media so far, further solidifying our position as a digital pioneer. It showcases a cutting-edge approach to video that will make media buying, creative production, data and analytics work together in real time and at a fraction of the cost.”

The agreement includes a substantial global upfront advertising commitment and is strategically aligned with the company’s goal to allocate resources to accelerate expansion of global innovation platforms, Power Brands and breakthrough technologies.

“Online video is crucial for our brands as it enables us to achieve higher unduplicated reach and ROI. By shifting more of our spending to online video, we’ll significantly increase our ROI and this will help fuel growth for our Power Brands,” Bough added.

“We’re inspired by the caliber of creative work that brands are creating on YouTube,” says Lucas Watson, Vice President of Global Brand Solutions, Google.”This agreement represents a significant commitment for our companies to accelerate digital brand building and we’re excited to partner with Mondelez International on this work.”

In addition to the advertising commitment, Mondelez International and Google are partnering on content pilots through YouTube’s Brand Partner Program. Together with global youth media company Fullscreen, Mondelez International is piloting this new model of high-quality, low-cost video content featuring influential digital stars with Sour Patch Kids in the US and is evaluating expanding the approach across brands and geographies.

Brokered in conjunction with Starcom MediaVest, the agreement with Google is global and covers developed markets in North America and Europe as well as emerging markets in Eastern Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and Asia Pacific.