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P&G’s lifeboat in murky and fraudulent waters

P&G’s lifeboat in murky and fraudulent waters

When we polled media leaders at the end of last year about what they think will top the industry’s agenda for 2017, many of their comments revolved around the erosion of trust and the need for greater transparency.

We’ve been talking about this for a long, long time now, but it’s taken a particularly powerful client to really change the tide.

Just four short weeks into the beginning of a new year, Procter & Gamble’s chief brand officer, Marc Pritchard (pictured), has called on the industry to “clean” digital up – especially around the muddied waters of media buying and viewability.

“We have a media supply chain that is murky at best and fraudulent at worst,” Pritchard said at the IAB’s annual leadership meeting on Sunday. “We need to clean it up, and invest the time and money we save into better advertising to drive growth.”

Pritchard said P&G is currently poring over every agency contract in an attempt to achieve full transparency by the end of 2017 – including terms requiring funds to be used for media payment only, all rebates to be disclosed and returned, and all transactions subject to audit.

That also means adopting basic viewability standards, ditching the adtech middle men, (potentially) breaking down walled gardens, and getting serious about measurement.

Interestingly, Pritchard’s comments come in the same week that a new report from the World Federation of Advertisers revealed that almost 90% of advertisers say they are “reviewing and resetting” contracts and business models with agency trading desks to improve control and transparency.

When presented with so many problems in an ecosystem with so many players, there is what can only be described as a diffusion of responsibility. It certainly takes a brave soul to take a stand and change the ways things are.

Our guess is that 2017 really will be the year in which online advertising cleans up its act.

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