"Premium" publishers concerned that direct response media marketshare is being eaten up by the relatively low-priced media bought on ad exchanges have a new - if predicted - worry: that the brand advertising media market might move in that direction as well. Kellogg's is finding that they can be effective in reaching brand goals through the programmatic buying.

Kellogg's has traditionally been one of the firms most likely to experiment with new means of acquiring media - even going so far as to dedicate five percent of media budgets to media research studies to help determine relative efficacies. While much of that enormous media research budget may go in actuality to research designed to make brand managers' decisions look smart, they are one of the few very large brand firms to regularly field large-scale research.

While they have been measuring what audiences they reach and viewability, they are actively trying to suss out what metrics indicate success in terms of branding break-through. Clicks are an obvious poor measurement, and they are currently examining dwell-time.

One of the key elements allowing firms like Kellogg to join the robotic revolution is an increased visibility for them as to which media avails are actually flowing through these otherwise-blind exchanges. Publishers' and networks' willingness to be more forthright with the nature of the media seems to be paying off with better brand participation.