Hasta La Creative!

A computer geek with an industrial engineering degree, Bob Arnold might seem a better fit for Silicon Valley than Battle Creek, Mich. But he’s right at home at cereal and snacks giant Kellogg, where he is leading the 107-year-old company into the new frontier of programmatic digital ad buying.

Mr. Arnold, who is 36, said Kellogg will never go 100% programmatic, which he broadly defines as the process of using data and algorithms to automate planning and buying. But he said there’s an advantage in that “you basically help the algorithms understand what success is, and then measure whether or not the algorithms are getting you there.”

That strategy seems to have gotten Kellogg pretty far: He said the company has boosted return on investment for some brands six times greater than old methods. “It takes a while but once you start finding success, it is something that you can repeat at scale really quickly,” said Mr. Arnold.

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