• by Sean Hargrave , Staff Writer, March 6, 2017

Of all the reiterated points that P&G's Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard has made in his repeated calls for more transparency in digital marketing, the one that didn't make the headlines is perhaps the most telling. 

Pritchard famously called out adland last month for being too murky and complicated. It became the most listened-to call in quite some time as agencies realised that this time brands just might mean business. In fact, I was talking with Unilever last week and the company pointed out that its guys have been saying much the same thing for the past couple of years and have also been intensifying conversations with the digital marketing industry to achieve great clarity. When Unilever and P&G are calling for action, you know this is an issue that isn't going away.

Pritchard was clearing up some points when speaking at an ANA event at the end of last week. Interestingly, he made it clear that he wasn't overly keen to pick a fight with widely adopted viewability metrics that he says are pretty much like housekeeping metrics. It's similar to asking whether the magazine ran with my ad or if the tv company showed my spot during the game last night. It's a question of whether it was made available to be viewed, not whether the message was actually viewed. That's a different question altogether.

So it was not viewability where Pritchard made his loudest call. For me, this came when he pointed out to delegates that there had been a lot of talk and no action. It's good that Facebook and Google are opening up and being honest about their transparency and metrics issues. However, the tone from what I can see, is that we've heard a lot of talk and now is the time for action.

Again, in what many see as a footnote but I think is actually the second-biggest point after the call for action, Pritchard turned his attention to ad-tech platforms. For all those ad networks and ad-tech vendors who say all these demands from brands to actually get what they pay for are too odious, he offered a top three list to prioritisen -- viewability, reach and frequency. Third-party verification is another must, he insisted.

In other news, and kind of underscoring Pritchard's overall concern with digital marketing, Google admitted that it probably hasn't done all it can to educate advertisers about the brand safety implications of offering the chance to be seen widely on the platform. The admission came after an investigation by The Times showed that some high-profile companies had suffered ads being shown alongside extremist videos. The balance between the wide reach of programmatic and brand safety probably has not been as fully explored as it should, the tech giant admitted. 

Altogether, it's a bit of a pickle, isn't it? Pritchard certainly admits that relationships between brands and agencies have become increasingly fraught due to transparency issues. Just for balance, I'm sure agencies are feeling the same frustration over procurement tactics.

Ultimately, it doesn't seem too unreasonable that advertisers want to be assured they have an open and honest relationship with their agencies and that they get what they pay for, does it?

The lesson from the latest couple of speeches from Marc Pritchard, and the attention they've received, is that brands want action. Inspections, reviews, focus groups, intentions to do something are all well and good. Brands are clearly screaming out they want action, not just talk.