• The New York Times, Monday, April 10, 2017 8:33 AM

Procter & Gamble Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard has actively been calling out the digital advertising industry since January, so why not sound off to The New York Times about the issues? Pritchard tells the Times it's time the industry grew up. And if the world's biggest advertiser can't tell off the industry, who can?

Pritchard is taking the industry to task on several fronts: He's demanding more transparency from giants like Google and Facebook, as well as ad-tech firms and media agencies on measurement, "how many people see them and with what kind of content they are appearing," the Times reported. He's also demanding more disclosures from all partners about fees.

He told those assembled at the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As) in Los Angeles last week that he wants to see fewer agencies working on search and video. And he told the Times he's concerned about brand safety: "Ads showing up on objectionable sites, that’s bad. Ads showing up to bots, through searching, that’s bad. Ads that you place that don’t really get measured by a third party that validates what’s right — that’s not so good, either. There’s a number of things in the digital media supply chain — even ads that aren’t viewable or close to viewable." The industry must clean itself up so that advertisers can make "logical, data-based, reasonable decisions and, most importantly, spend time on what’s really important, which is great creativity to drive growth."

Read the whole story at The New York Times »