Mondelez International, the snacks company, has doubled down on advertising on e-commerce platforms as it seeks to reach consumers near the point of digital purchase.

Dirk Van de Put, CEO of Mondelez International, discussed this subject at the 2020 RBC Capital Markets’ Consumer & Retail Conference.

Alongside running ads that are “very relevant to the moment” for numerous brands – such as Oreo cookies and Cadbury chocolate – the company has reflected evolving consumer habits with a shift towards running these messages on e-commerce sites.

“We’ve also started to switch the media that we use [and are] advertising more on e-commerce channels because, of course, you see e-commerce going up,” said Van de Put. (For more, read WARC’s in-depth report: Mondelez’s strategy for doubling down on e-commerce.)

Elaborating on this theme, he reported that Mondelez had been increasing its digital advertising efforts prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, but has now accelerated this trend in a specific way.

“We’ve already been shifting a lot more advertising into digital, but we are now shifting more of our advertising into the e-commerce sites,” Van de Put said.

The reason for this approach on e-commerce sites is largely akin to the logic behind advertising near the point of purchase in a bricks-and-mortar retail outlet.

“There you can have the advertising right together with the moment of purchase, and we see that it’s having a very beneficial effect for us. So that shift is taking place, and that is also driving our e-commerce sales,” he said.

More broadly, this strategy is in line with data showing a spike in return on advertising spend through Amazon’s online retail site. “Your advertising needs to be as close to that e-commerce moment as possible,” Van de Put said.

Drilling down further into Mondelez’s e-commerce performance, he revealed that it was driving the most growth from the online platforms from retailers that had a physical store network.

“We are also performing well with the e-tailers like Amazon and Alibaba. But, clearly, the bulk of our sales is with the omnichannel retailers,” he said.

Sourced from WARC