P&G Cuts $100 Million in Digital Ads

P&G Cuts More Than $100 Million in ‘Largely Ineffective’ Digital Ads
Consumer product giant steers clear of ‘bot’ traffic and objectionable content ...

Almost all of the consumer product giant’s advertising cuts in the period came from digital, finance chief Jon Moeller said on its earnings call Thursday. The company targeted ads that could wind up on sites with fake traffic from software known as “bots,” or those with objectionable content.

“What it reflected was a choice to cut spending from a digital standpoint where it was ineffective, where either we were serving bots as opposed to human beings or where the placement of ads was not facilitating the equity of our brands,” he said. ... " 

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P&G Cuts Digital Spending, Sales Rise

So digital advertising not directly tied to sales here.   Stock is up.   Requires sign-in/subscription:

In Adage:    P&G Slashes Digital Ads by $140M Over Brand Safety. Sales Rise Anyway   Net earnings rose 15%, with nearly half the gain from those digital media cuts. P&G might not rush to restore the spending. ....  " 

More detail inYahoo Finance.

Examining Digital Advertising

In Technology Review.    Read the complete thing.

Digital Advertising Takes a Hit
Big-name advertisers have begun to question whether they’ve placed too much faith—and money—in targeted advertising.   by Kate Kaye   

Since its infancy in the 1990s, the digital advertising industry has trumpeted the special power of digital ads. Unlike newspaper or television ads, online advertising can be aimed precisely at the very people a company wants to reach, so businesses won’t waste money by showing ads to those consumers outside predetermined parameters.

Then last year Procter & Gamble’s chief marketing officer, Marc Pritchard, declared that the company would pull back on ad targeting on Facebook. One of a number of recent announcements by Pritchard regarding P&G’s dissatisfaction with digital advertising, the news led some to question the value of digital advertising’s distinguishing characteristic: its capacity to target narrow segments of the population.

P&G’s reëvaluation of its approach is part of a trend that appears to be growing among advertisers, says Tom Riordan, special operations consultant at Adobe Advertising Cloud, a platform that helps advertisers manage ad strategy and measurement (see “The End of Internet Advertising as We Know It”) .... " 

P&G Still Loves Facebook

 In Adage: 

P&G, GM and Facebook Agree: Big Is Beautiful By Jack Neff.

Facebook has drawn unwanted scrutiny of late over how it counts video viewership and the usefulness of its ad targeting, but a Town Hall panel discussion with executives of two of the biggest advertisers in the world -- Procter & Gamble Co. and General Motors – suggests they still have plenty of love for the social network.

Two things were clear from the session that brought General Motors CEO Mary Barra and P&G Global Brand Officer Marc Pritchard on stage with Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg. They now see a platform long touted for its ability to deliver highly personalized messages largely as a mass medium. And gender equality will continue to be fundamental to the messages of all three – with an emphasis even on backing the talk with concrete steps to bolster the place of women in their own ranks and, at least in the case of P&G, at its agencies.

Despite decades of proclamations about the death of mass marketing, such talk was nowhere to be found among the giant social network and giant marketers on stage. Indeed, Ms. Sandberg repeatedly referred to the giant Facebook network's capacity to deliver "a Super Bowl every day."  .... ' 

Mastering Brand Building in the Third Decade of Digital

Today at: Mastering Brand Building in the Third Decade of Digital

See the ongoing Signal PG (Procter & Gamble) conference tweeted at #SignalPG

More to follow.

How to Find Needed Market Research Data

The data you need to make your company work efficiently is often hard to find.  A former colleague has a startup that addresses this.   It is being used by P&G.  Note how this is also related to all kinds of data assets.

Can’t find your market research data? This startup can help
That Diet Coke in your hand didn’t invent itself. It’s the result of years of focus groups, surveys and data crunching—more commonly known as market research. Companies that produce consumer packaged goods (CPGs) spend millions each year on market research and it’s both a blessing and a curse. It’s a boon to planning new products and tweaking existing ones but when it comes to finding individual pieces of information, that’s where the cursing comes in. A startup out of Chicago called KnowledgeHound thinks it has the answer. .... 

As KnowledgeHound CEO Kristi Zuhlke put it, companies spend all that cash on studies, then “stash the results on a hard drive, and promptly experience ‘corporate amnesia’.” .... 
Zuhlke experienced this firsthand in her time at Procter & Gamble working in consumer insights. “As soon as we’d get the info in, a month later we’d forget we had it. There wasn’t a central, easily navigated place to access.” Building on her experiences in the consumer packaged goods industry, Zuhlke founded KnowledgeHound in 2012 and went from paper to product in four months. Her first customer? Procter & Gamble.   ..... " 

See also a video visualization.

Ad Spending Falls

In Adage: " .. Top Ad Spenders Pull Back in Third Quarter ... Internet Display Spending Fell 1.7% as Desktop Page Views Fell  ... Top spender P&G has now posted three consecutive quarters of year-over-year spending declines. ... " 

Big CPG Takes Advertising Claims to Court

In Adage:   Fascinating direction about what claims can be made in advertising.    Nestle, P&G and Unilever are examples.  " ... The world's three biggest packaged-goods companies, facing increased investor pressure over sluggish sales growth, have each sued much-smaller rivals in federal courts this year over ad claims. This comes after years of relying on the lower-cost National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus for such disputes. While some see signs of bullying, the big players say they're taking appropriate steps to fight "egregiously" false claims. ... "

P&G's Changes in Spending

In AdAge:   A good detailed piece on P&G's moves in ad spending. " ... P&G's marketing spend is about one-third digital, CEO says  Procter & Gamble is directing as much as 35% of its marketing budget to digital media as the company tries to match customer presence online and on mobile devices, CEO A.G. Lafley said. Digital has been a faster way to reach customers and get their feedback, other executives added. P&G brands with a large digital concentration include Pampers, Secret and Old Spice. ... " 

Forget the Tech

Its to easy too just see the technology.  You still have to implement good ideas with it.  Marc Pritchard, P&G's Global Brand Building Officer speaks about this in New Orleans.