Makers Of Oreo Eye “Buy Now” Shopable Ads

Mondelez International, global snacking powerhouse of $34 billion (2014), has a very active presence on social media and now wants this presence to generate serious revenues. Mondelez is looking into launching its very own “Buy Button” and shopable ads which would be linked to one of its 130 and more retailers, according to L2.

With Twitter and Facebook having rolled out their “Buy Buttons” along side status updates in 2014, the door is open for experiments by big and smaller brands. The Oreo maker is planning to insert a “Buy Now” button on platforms such as Oreo’s Facebook page, which currently has more than 40 million likes, or its Facebook Cadbury page, which has 942 million likes. Each like is a potential buy.

What is at stake ? A B2B Social Media Report recently released its findings on whether B2B businesses should invest in social media. The numbers say that of the world’s top 200 B2B brands, there were more than 70,000 “intent to purchase” mentions of them on social media channels over a single year. Less than 1 percent of these mentions, however, led to an engagement by the brand mentioned with the potential customer. According to B2B Social Media Report, that amounts to $36 billion in missed revenue.

But will Mondelez succeed in convincing its different communities to buy on social platforms? At this point, nothing is for sure. A Harris poll has recently published a survey which found that barely 5 percent of adult shoppers have made a purchase on social networks. The same poll reports that users on social media are not even interested in purchasing on social media platforms. Period. The problem is that social networks were never designed to directly deliver sales—that was just the job of E-Commerce sites.

According to Adweek, Mondelez’ objective is to double online revenue over the next couple of years and focus in particular on social-media-savy millenials.

“I doubt that anyone at Mondelez or anywhere else thinks it will be groundbreaking or an enormous new revenue strategy, but it shows they’re willing to test and learn,” said Forrester Research analyst Sucharita Mulpuru to AdWeek. “It doesn’t cost much to experiment in this way, and at least they capture some data and insights that could help personalization and marketing efforts later.”

And if it doesn’t generate as much as expected, that’s ok. “This could be a way to lay the foundation for things like product development,” explained Jennifer Polk in Adweek, an analyst at Gartner. “If you know that people have a higher propensity towards Double Stuf Oreos than regular Oreos at a specific time of year based on how they interact on your site, then you’re in a much better position to start making decisions on product development, innovation, marketing and how you position your brand.”