Digital advertising shift explained:
- Campbell’s will direct approximately 85% of its working media budget towards social, influencer, e-commerce and AI-enabled platforms.
- Unilever, Mondelez and other major CPG companies are also investing heavily in creators, digital media and AI-generated marketing content.
- Traditional advertising still builds broad recognition, but brands increasingly expect media spending to deliver measurable engagement and sales.
Campbell’s latest earnings painted a difficult picture for investors, with fourth-quarter net sales falling 8% to $2.1bn, adjusted earnings dropping 37% and its Snacks division reporting a 12% sales decline. The US food group also announced a $500m savings programme, more than 550 job losses and a 36% dividend cut.
However, one detail in CEO Mick Beekhuizen’s turnaround plan raised a much broader question for food and drink manufacturers: does traditional advertising still justify its share of the budget?
“We are further accelerating our shift towards digital, responding to how consumers are discovering and engaging with brands,” said Beekhuizen. “This includes expanded use of social, influencer and e-commerce channels, as well as newer AI-enabled platforms, which together will represent approximately 85% of our working media budget.”
The 85% figure covers Campbell’s spend on placing and distributing advertising, rather than its complete marketing bill. Production costs, agency fees, consumer research, packaging and other marketing activities may sit outside ‘working media’, and the company hasn’t disclosed exactly how the 85% will be divided between social media, influencers, e-commerce and AI. Even so, it’s a sizeable commitment from the owner of Goldfish, Pepperidge Farm, Snyder’s of Hanover, Cape Cod, Kettle Brand and Late July.
Those brands have been built through television exposure, familiar packaging, supermarket visibility and repeated mass-market campaigns. Now, however, Campbell’s wants social platforms, creators, online retailers and AI-driven advertising tools to carry far more of the load.
What’s changed is that a consumer can now watch someone review a new crisp, scan the comments, follow a retailer link and buy it without leaving the platform. Discovery, recommendation and purchase can all happen within a single interaction.
Big CPG leaves the commercial break
Campbell’s joins a growing group of major advertisers moving money towards social and creator-led media, although few have put such a large percentage against the change.
Unilever announced in March 2025 that it would increase social-media spending from around 30% to 50% and work with 20 times more influencers. By December, the Graze, Marmite and Knorr owner was reportedly working with close to 300,000 influencers worldwide. General Mills has also reassessed its creator-marketing activity, while Coca-Cola and Kraft Heinz have experimented with AI in advertising.
Unilever CEO Fernando Fernandez explained the company’s thinking during a Barclays fireside chat in March 2025. “Messages of brands coming from corporations are suspicious messages,” he said. “Creating marketing activity systems in which others can speak for your brand at scale is very important.”
Food discovery already reflects that change. Consumers encounter products in lunchbox videos, shopping hauls, recipes, taste tests, limited-edition reviews and footage filmed in supermarket aisles. An effective creator can present the product, demonstrate how it’s used, provide social endorsement and send the viewer directly to the checkout.
And the money is following them. US advertiser spend on creators was expected to reach $37bn in 2025, representing growth of 26% year on year, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). Content on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram was also predicted to attract more ad revenue than professionally produced content from TV networks, cinemas and news organisations.
Scale, however, brings its own complications. Ruben Schreurs, CEO of media and marketing consultancy Ebiquity, warned that Unilever’s decision to expand its influencer roster by 20 times would increase creators’ bargaining power, producing “significant price inflation and a wave of new entrants trying to capitalise on the influencer rush”.
Brands may therefore find that creator marketing becomes more expensive as global advertisers compete for credible personalities. Larger fees won’t remove the risks created by inflated engagement figures, inadequate disclosure, disputed product claims or an influencer whose behaviour suddenly becomes a brand-safety problem.
Mondelez is approaching digital advertising through its production costs. The Oreo, Milka, Cadbury and Chips Ahoy producer has invested more than $40m in a generative-AI marketing platform developed with Accenture, which it expects to reduce content-production costs by 30% to 50%.
AI-generated material has already been used in social campaigns for Chips Ahoy in the US and Milka in Germany, while Oreo has used the technology for product pages on Amazon and Walmart. Mondelez also expects the system to become capable of producing short TV commercials, potentially including material for the 2027 Super Bowl.
One carefully produced TV commercial might previously have anchored a campaign for several months. A modern product launch can demand hundreds of videos, images, creator adaptations, retailer listings and personalised versions for different audiences, markets and platforms. Lowering the cost of each asset makes that output possible, although it also threatens to fill consumers’ feeds with material that looks polished but feels interchangeable.
US digital advertising revenue reached $294.6bn in 2025, rising 13.9% year on year. The IAB expects total US ad expenditure to grow 9.5% in 2026, with social media forecast to rise 14.6%, connected television, which delivers TV content through internet-connected sets and streaming platforms, by 13.8% and commerce media by 12.1%.
Linear television – programmes broadcast at scheduled times through traditional terrestrial, cable or satellite channels – is expected to continue declining. Connected TV is moving in the opposite direction because it combines film’s visual impact with digital targeting and measurement.
The advert becomes the shop
E-commerce and retail media have particular appeal across food, drink and other consumer goods because they shorten the route between seeing a product and paying for it.
A TV commercial can make someone want a biscuit, but it can’t tell the manufacturer whether that particular viewer bought one. An advert on Amazon, Walmart or a supermarket app can appear beside the product, provide a purchase button and use the retailer’s customer data to connect exposure with sales.
Such accountability becomes particularly attractive when volumes are falling and marketing budgets are under intense scrutiny. Campbell’s snack volumes declined 6% during the fourth quarter, while Beekhuizen described the company’s overall performance as ‘unacceptable’. Its digital allocation forms part of a broader attempt to concentrate spending behind brands and activities capable of producing a measurable return.
Goldfish and Pepperidge Farm will be among the priority brands. Campbell’s is preparing national campaigns and influencer-led media plans to support new launches, including gluten-free, wholegrain and higher-protein Goldfish products. Digital targeting will allow those products to reach different consumer groups through relevant content. Parents could encounter wholegrain Goldfish in practical lunchbox ideas, while protein-focused products could appear in fitness and active-lifestyle feeds. Search advertising, specialist creators and retailer data could direct gluten-free versions towards people already seeking alternatives.
AI will make that targeting faster and more granular. Brands can generate multiple creative versions, identify responsive audiences and move spend towards the combinations producing the strongest results. AI could also become a discovery channel as consumers ask assistants what to serve at a party, pack for school or eat after exercise.
Manufacturers have spent years trying to rank highly in Google searches and retailer results. Their next challenge may involve understanding why an AI assistant recommends one cracker, cereal bar or biscuit ahead of another. Product descriptions, consumer reviews, recipes, availability and retailer listings could all influence visibility, while paid placement on AI platforms may eventually become another entry in the media plan.
A more immediate problem lies in what digital advertising measures. Clicks, conversions and advertising returns are easier to quantify than familiarity, affection or the likelihood that someone will still choose the brand in five years. Algorithms naturally move money towards audiences most likely to respond, but those people may already know or buy the product.
Continually targeting existing demand can improve this month’s figures without creating next year’s customers. Campbell’s needs its new media strategy to reverse declining volumes, but Goldfish and Pepperidge Farm also need the broad cultural presence that prevents them from becoming invisible outside carefully selected digital audiences.
Can efficiency still build fame?
Traditional TV, print and outdoor advertising still offer something fragmented online campaigns struggle to reproduce: the feeling that a brand is known by everyone.
A TV commercial shown during a major sporting event can enter popular culture, while prominent outdoor and print campaigns give a launch scale and legitimacy. These channels reach consumers who weren’t searching for the product, hadn’t been identified as likely buyers and wouldn’t necessarily follow a food influencer.
Television itself is evolving rather than vanishing. Nielsen found that 56% of marketers planned to increase spending on connected TV, while 65% expected retail media networks to play a larger role in their strategies. Future campaigns are likely to use connected TV for storytelling, social creators for relevance and retail media for conversion, instead of asking one channel to perform every task.
Traditional advertising can also provide the central creative idea needed to hold a fragmented campaign together. Without it, hundreds of personalised assets risk becoming hundreds of disconnected messages. Pepsi faced this problem in the years leading up to 2024, when its US marketing became divided across music, sport and other themes without a consistent proposition. After taking charge of PepsiCo’s North American beverage business in early 2024, Ram Krishnan refocused the brand’s advertising around a clearer message linking Pepsi with food.
AI increases the urgency of that creative problem. Coca-Cola’s AI-generated Christmas commercials were criticised for lacking the warmth associated with the brand’s traditional festive advertising. The tech produced the required images, but efficiency couldn’t reproduce the emotional response expected from the campaign.
Advertising veteran Sir Martin Sorrell believes the pressure is particularly acute for established consumer goods companies. He founded and now chairs S4 Capital, a digital advertising and marketing services group, after spending 33 years leading WPP, the global advertising and communications company he also founded. Of the $1.2tn spent globally on advertising in 2025, Sir Martin estimates that $900bn went to digital channels, while the remaining $300bn covered declining traditional media, linear TV and live sport.
Larger companies such as Unilever and P&G are being challenged by smaller, more agile brands using social media and influencers, he told Financial Express. “If you don’t use the new methods, you get taken apart,” said Sir Martin, adding advertisers must compete through the same channels and techniques as their emerging rivals.
AI is accelerating the pressure on brands and their agencies by reducing the time and cost involved in visualisation and copywriting. Sir Martin expects media planning and buying to become increasingly automated as algorithms assume more of the work. “Clients are shifting budgets towards output and performance,” he said.
The pressure to move is undeniable, but the 85% figure leaves Campbell’s with a delicate balance to manage. Digital channels can find consumers, personalise messages and turn attention into a transaction with extraordinary speed. Traditional campaigns remain better equipped to create shared memories and the broad recognition that keeps a household name in the household.
Traditional snack advertising isn’t obsolete, although its former position at the centre of the media plan is slipping away. The bigger danger is that food companies become so adept at making advertising measurable that they forget to make their brands memorable.
