Mondelez’s $40M AI Bet: What It Bought and What It Didn’t

Seven months after Reuters reported that Mondelez had put more than $40 million into a generative AI tool designed to cut the cost of its marketing content by 30% to 50%, the company gave its biggest brand to a creative agency. In May 2026, 72andSunny won global creative for Oreo and US creative for Mondelez’s biscuit brands after a competitive pitch, taking Oreo’s US work from The Martin Agency.

That is not a retreat from AI. It is the clearest lesson in the whole $40 million story. Mondelez is paying for AI and for people at the same time, for two different jobs, and the line it drew between them is the one most brands will have to draw too.

What Mondelez built, and what changed after the headline

The platform was announced in September 2024, when Mondelez said it was building an AI marketing capability with Accenture and Publicis Groupe to create personalized text, images and video faster. Jon Halvorson, then its head of consumer experience, told Digiday it would be “a proprietary platform that we own,” used by both the company and its agencies. The tool, called AIDA, for AI plus data, launched in July 2025 and was tested on Oreo, Chips Ahoy, Ritz and Perfect Bar, according to Food Dive.

In October 2025, Reuters reported the $40 million figure, the 30% to 50% savings target, early uses such as Chips Ahoy social ads in the US and Milka content in Germany, and an ambition to have short AI-made TV ads ready for the 2026 holiday season, possibly followed by a 2027 Super Bowl spot. Every asset is reviewed by people before release.

Then the people changed. Halvorson left to become marketing chief at Kenvue, and in January 2026 Mondelez hired Travis Freeman, previously chief media officer at Inspire Brands, and announced a US creative review. B&T reported that the review was driven by declining domestic biscuit sales. On the company’s second-quarter 2026 earnings call, chief operating officer Luca Zaramella said the previous year’s marketing cuts had come mostly from non-working media, the money that does not buy audience, and called what AI can do for creative media “an important frontier.”

AI got the cost line. The idea went to an agency.

Read those facts together and the division of labor is plain. AIDA’s jobs are social ads, animated content, product page imagery, personalized variations and versions of existing work for different markets. That is one-to-many work: take something that exists and make more of it, faster and cheaper. Jennifer Mennes, Mondelez’s vice president of global digital marketing, described the tool to Food Dive as “an enabler,” adding, “It’s not a net-new strategy.”

The creative review was about something else. It followed declining US biscuit sales. A demand problem is not solved by making the same message cheaper to produce. If fewer people want the product, a 40% cut in the cost of each asset buys you more assets that do not change their minds. What changes minds is the idea: what the brand says, why it matters to someone, and how it looks and sounds in a way nobody else does. Mondelez went to an agency for that.

This is the split worth copying. AI is excellent at the volume problem. It does not tell you what to say. Hello, inside Colgate-Palmolive, aims its AI at that earlier question, finding needs its team had stopped noticing, an approach covered in how Hello uses AI to find what humans miss. Mondelez aimed its biggest AI investment at production. Both are legitimate. They answer different questions, and a brand that confuses them will produce a lot of content and wonder why sales do not move.

Cheaper content is an advantage only until everyone has it

The production savings are real, and Mondelez says its recent cuts came mostly from non-working costs while its advertising budget kept growing. But no brand keeps a cost advantage that its competitors can buy. The tools that make Mondelez’s versions cheaper are available, in simpler form, to every snack brand on the shelf. Once everyone generates content cheaply, cheap content stops differentiating anyone, the argument made in why human copy wins back ground once everyone generates the same AI copy.

There is a second risk that Mondelez built rules against. A generative model reproduces what it has seen most often, and what it has seen most often is what a category looks like in general. Left alone, AI-made snack ads drift toward generic snack imagery: the same textures, the same smiling families, the same light. That is the problem described in why category codes quietly hand your ads to the market leader. Mondelez’s answer is to write the brand into the system. Food Dive reported brand rules that block imagery of overindulgence, and Reuters reported guardrails against showing unhealthy eating, emotionally manipulative language and offensive stereotypes. Tina Vaswani, its vice president of digital enablement, said AI “has a big responsibility to stay true to our brand.”

What a smaller brand should take from a $40 million budget

You do not need to build a platform. Mondelez built one because it sells in more than 150 countries and produces content at a scale few companies match. Off-the-shelf tools cover most of what a smaller brand needs. The structure is what transfers.

Start with the repetitive work. Resizing, versions for different placements, product page images, translations and animated variants of an approved idea are where AI saves the most time with the least risk.

Write the rules before you generate anything: your colors, your characters, your tone, and what must never appear. Defining which elements are yours and holding every asset to them is the work of brand identity strategy built on codes you own, and it matters more once a machine is producing the assets.

Keep a person between the tool and the public. Mondelez sends every asset through human review, and a smaller brand with less legal cover has more reason to do the same.

Spend the savings on the idea or on reach, not on more volume. The best use of cheaper production is one strong idea carried into many formats, which is how content marketing built around a single strong idea should work.

The next public test is whether AI-made TV spots air this holiday season, as Reuters reported Mondelez intended. Whatever happens on television, the company has already shown where it thinks AI belongs: in making more of a good idea, not in finding one.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much has Mondelez invested in generative AI for marketing?

Reuters reported in October 2025 that Mondelez had invested more than $40 million in a generative AI marketing tool, developed with Accenture, and that it expected the tool to cut marketing content production costs by 30% to 50%. Mondelez first announced the platform with Accenture and Publicis Groupe in September 2024. The tool, AIDA, launched in July 2025 and has been used for social ads, animated content and ecommerce product pages.

What is Mondelez’s AIDA?

AIDA, short for AI plus data, is Mondelez’s in-house generative AI tool for producing marketing content faster and at lower cost. It launched in July 2025 and was tested on brands including Oreo, Chips Ahoy, Ritz and Perfect Bar. It includes brand rules, such as blocking imagery of overindulgence, and every asset goes through human and legal review before release. Executives describe it as a way to execute existing strategy faster, not as a new strategy.

Who is Mondelez’s advertising agency?

Mondelez works with several agencies by brand and market. In May 2026, 72andSunny won global creative for Oreo and US creative for Mondelez’s biscuit brands after a competitive pitch, taking Oreo’s US account from The Martin Agency. Publicis Groupe, which previously handled US biscuits, kept local activation for Oreo in international markets and helped build Mondelez’s AI platform along with Accenture.

Will Mondelez run an AI-generated Super Bowl ad?

Reuters reported in October 2025 that Mondelez aimed to have short AI-generated TV ads ready for the 2026 holiday season and was considering using the tool for the 2027 Super Bowl. At the time of writing, neither has been publicly confirmed. Mondelez has since appointed 72andSunny to lead Oreo’s global creative, which suggests that big brand moments will still start with an agency idea, with AI used to produce and adapt the work.

Is Mondelez replacing its agencies with AI?

No. Mondelez built its AI platform with Publicis Groupe and Accenture and said from the start that both the company and its agencies would use it. It has since run a creative review and hired 72andSunny for global Oreo creative. The evidence points to AI taking over repetitive production work, such as versions, adaptations and product imagery, while agencies keep responsibility for the brand idea.