Kellanova, in partnership with data firm Vidmob and MMA Global, has found it will possibly more quickly connect the dots between campaign creative and business outcomes by leveraging artificial intelligence to power predictive impact scoring, which crunches past performance data to pinpoint creative criteria for driving specific KPIs.
In an evaluation of greater than 443 Kellanova creative assets, the marketer of snack brands Pringles, Cheez-It and Pop-Tarts found that predictive impact scoring can forecast three-second view-through rates (VTR) with 83% accuracy, improve performance by greater than two times and contribute to an 11% increase in ROI.
“Predictive impact scores are like creative fingerprints – unique to our brand, actionable and incredibly powerful for driving each brand distinctiveness and performance,” said Charisse Hughes, senior vice chairman and chief growth officer at Kellanova, in a press release. “At scale, these transcend growth and drive transformation, and with AI we will do that with increased speed and accuracy.”
The study, conducted between March 2024 and March 2025, analyzed assets that ran across Meta platforms within the U.S using Vidmob’s Aperture technology. The evaluation was used to pinpoint 19 company-wide and 11 category-specific scoring criteria which can be now getting used to inform Kellanova promoting creative moving forward.
“Creative has at all times been just a little bit subjective, just a little bit art and science. But now, with the power to process large sets of knowledge at scale and give you the chance to construct more advanced analytics and modeling on top of that, we will get to more precision and more predictiveness of business outcomes,” said Nicole Vinson, vice chairman of digital, media and omni-shopper experience at Kellanova.
Inside the method
Kellanova’s latest predictive scoring work began a couple of years ago when the corporate implemented Vidmob’s fit-for-platform best practices and scoring capabilities — a primary step in adhering to the fundamentals required by each digital platform to ensure creative performance. When MMA Global approached Kellanova about testing predictive scoring, the corporate was prepared to connect scoring with specific KPIs.
“The advantage that you may have as a marketer is that you could unlock specific insights which can be specific to your brand and your distinctive brand assets. That’s your personal secret sauce. That’s your competitive advantage versus my next competitor that is using the same tool,” Vinson said.
The study checked out high-production value, branded creative assets from 10 brands in Kellanova’s North America business across Meta platforms, analyzing greater than several billion impressions over the yr. The use of Vidmob’s AI tool allowed Kellanova to winnow down 20,000 creative decisions — like including positive emotion in the primary several seconds of an ad, having audio or text overlays, the presence of name logos and characters or consumption cues, for instance – into 19 variables.
“As you consider the facility of this, it isn’t to create a paint-by-numbers solution for our creatives and our content production partners,” Vinson explained. “It’s to help them to understand what are those variables which have the best predictability of improving performance so we will then start to inform future creative decisions, operationalize that and scale that across our business.”
After analyzing its creative on Meta platforms, Kellanova has run the exercise using the identical framework and methodology across all digital media platforms and rescoring creative against latest criteria to acknowledge, for instance, what works higher on Facebook compared to TikTok. The recursive process is allowing Kellanova to drill down into what works for specific brands and audiences.
“How do I then start to understand the recipe, when you will, for those drivers of effectiveness, in order that we will then put it back into those best practices to help inform the creative development process and the concept production process,” Vinson said.
The work also analyzes funnel stage and business objectives. As with platforms, upper funnel creative has different needs than middle or bottom funnel creative, with regard to calls to motion, product focus and beyond. In addition, Kellanova hopes to use the information to generate audience-level insights sooner or later.
“The power behind that is pretty exponential,” Vinson said. “We’re just scratching the surface right away — there’s a lot possibility in what this could start to unlock for us.”
Internal, external teams
Along with Vidmob and MMA Global, Kellanova relied on a cross-functional team that spanned insights and analytics, media operations and full-funnel marketing leads that represent different brand categories for the predictive scoring evaluation. The teams worked to establish clear goals, objectives and methodologies at every step of the journey.
“Everyone gets just a little nervous when there’s something latest on the market, and they’ve to trust something latest, especially when AI is involved — ‘But my gut tells me it needs to be this,’ and we’re like, ‘No, we’re trying to get to more data driven decisioning on your online business,’” Vinson gave for example. “What people say that they need to do could be very different than how they really behave.”
After determining the 19 variables that provided the clearest connection to outcomes, Kellanova prioritized the list — prerequisites, nice to haves, ones to watch and so on — and met with brand marketers, insights and analytics teams and media teams to work through the factors. The company is also now briefing its agencies on how they can be held accountable to utilizing the insights.
“As they at the moment are running any pre-flight creative, they understand it’s being scored against that criteria now, and there is a certain threshold that we’re holding our agencies accountable to in meeting those best practices once they do this scoring,” Vinson said.
Kellanova plans to pull agency scorecards every quarter and have conversations around what’s working, what’s not and how to move forward. The process is meant to be a relentless feedback loop, especially as platform algorithms, consumer behavior and campaign goals change over time.
“I’m not trying to grade everyone’s homework, but when we do not do this stuff, we’re leaving money on the table, especially in a really difficult environment right away, from a business perspective across the globe,” Vinson said. “You want to be a responsible steward of your brand budgets, and you would like to give every opportunity to improve your effectiveness and your success rate of driving net sales volume.”
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