Digital Advertising Facing Moment of Truth

What would you do with a $2.4 billion marketing budget? According to Adweek:

“You could buy 1.2 trillion online ads. Or you could take over 600 Times Square billboards for an entire year. You could even create 34,285 new marketing jobs, each with an annual salary of $70,000.

“Those figures explain why it is that every agency, platform and digital media player has been on high alert since Procter & Gamble chief brand officer Marc Pritchard, who holds the strings to the conglomerate’s $2.4 billion annual U.S. advertising purse, threatened to yank his company’s spend if they fail to address the growing mess of issues in digital advertising like fraud, brand safety and transparency.

“This past January, Pritchard raised more than a few eyebrows when he laid out an elaborate, five-point mandate during a speech at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s annual leadership meeting in Hollywood, Fla., essentially giving all of P&G’s digital advertising partners—namely, the duopoly of Google and Facebook and agencies—a one-year ultimatum stipulating that they clean up their practices and play by the megabrand’s rules or risk losing lucrative 2018 money from the country’s largest advertiser.”