Food giant Mondelez selects Irishman’s start-up to spearhead global e-commerce push

14 May 2015

ChannelSight, the start-up led by John Beckett who as a 17 year-old built the very first Ryanair website, has secured a major deal with food giant Mondelez to drive e-commerce in 25 markets worldwide.

Mondelez – which employs 130,000 people worldwide and comprises the global snack and food brands of the former Kraft Foods including Oreo, Cadbury’s and Trident gum – has selected ChannelSight to manage digital media touch points such as brands’ product pages, social media, video advertising and CRM campaigns.

Over the coming months, Mondelez International will continue to add “Buy Now” buttons created by ChannelSight to owned, earned and paid media platforms across 25 markets, linking to over 130 retailers’ websites, to make it easy for consumers to both find and buy Mondelez International products online.

After a successful pilot phase in 20 markets with over 100 retailers, the company is now rolling out the technology into additional regions and markets with brands such as Oreo cookies, Cadbury chocolate and Trident gum.

“As a global company, we’re looking at converting all our media investments into buying opportunities for consumers by driving e-commerce transactions at key retailers’ websites,” said Bonin Bough, chief media and e-commerce officer at Mondelez International.

“This partnership is a crucial step in our journey to help accelerate growth through e-commerce.

“By turning more of our branded content into buying opportunities for consumers, we’ll also continue to improve our return on investment and this will help fuel growth for our power brands.”

E-commerce visionary

John Beckett

John Beckett

John Beckett, the co-founder and CEO of ChannelSight, built the first Ryanair website in 2000 when he was then just 17 years old for the princely sum of IR£20,000. Within a year the website was handling three-quarters of all bookings. By 2003 passenger figures had grown to 21.4m, most of whom booked their tickets online.

ChannelSight, his latest start-up venture, is a fast-emerging e-commerce start-up that has already nixed global contracts with international companies like Philips and BSH to help drive their traffic through to partner retailers to increase conversions.

Beckett said that ChannelSight’s Buy Flow technology will simplify the consumer buying journey by directly transferring users to Mondelez International products at key retailers’ websites.

“We’re excited to further deepen our successful partnership with Mondelez International. Our market-leading platform sets the standard for in-media purchase-enablement technology for large brands,” Beckett said.

Video interview with John Beckett

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com