Procter & Gamble, PG -0.37% the biggest advertising spender in the world, is ramping up the pressure on the internet’s most dominant marketing platforms to urgently implement safeguards and independent verification to assure advertisers that their money is well spent.
Digital ad giants Google and Facebook FB 2.64% recently said they are prepared to let the Media Rating Council audit some of their data and ad metrics, following criticisms that such platforms have been grading their own homework, particularly after a series of measurement mistakes at Facebook. But, “it’s not enough,” said Marc Pritchard, chief brand officer and marketing lead for P&G, at the Association for National Advertisers media conference in Orlando, Florida.
“It’s worth mentioning that we are encouraged by the recent progress announced by the big players, Facebook and Google, and what we’ve heard from several others,” he said at the conference on Thursday, according to prepared remarks provided by the company. “But let’s also be clear that the announcements indicate intention and work in progress. It’s not enough until the verification and audits are actually implemented.”
“We’ve been more than patient because we made these requests nearly a year ago. So we need urgent completion, because then we can get to the more important work of understanding the value we’re getting,” Mr. Pritchard said.
Mr. Pritchard drew significant attention in the industry after he complained in January at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Annual Leadership Meeting about the complexities in the digital ad business, confusing agency contracts and the need for more widespread adoption of an MRC ad viewability standard.
On Thursday, he said he’s standing by those comments and his tough stance on problems that he described as “more acute” in digital advertising, where advertisers are now spending $72 billion, “surpassing TV.”
“Sometimes we deliver a high quality media experience, but all too often the experience is, well, crappy. We bombard consumers with thousands of ads a day, subject them to endless ad load times, interrupt them with pop-ups and overpopulate their screens and feeds. And with ad blockers growing 40% and fraud as high as 20%, who knows if they’re even seeing our ads,” he said.
Mr. Pritchard encouraged the industry’s marketers, agencies, publishers, ad tech platforms and suppliers to take action and reiterated the steps that P&G already said it planned on taking, including adopting one global viewability standard from the MRC.
“We know it’s the minimum standard,” he said. “We know it’s probably not perfect, but we’re adopting this standard in order to move forward to conduct business on a level playing field across platforms and publishers.”
He also said that companies have been slow to respond to issues plaguing the “media supply chain,” in part because they have fallen victim to industrywide “head fakes,” such as “The MRC standard is the lowest common denominator.” “Yep, it is, and that’s exactly what we need and want,” he said.
Other excuses that he referred to as “head fakes” included, “We don’t have sourced traffic because of privacy controls” and “We get cheaper rates from low-cost publishers.”
“At P&G, we are choosing to vote with our dollars,” he said. “We’ve already achieved media supply chain efficiencies, and believe there is a long runway ahead. We don’t want to waste time and money on a crappy media supply chain.”
Write to Alexandra Bruell at alexandra.bruell@wsj.com