• Ad Age, Tuesday, September 4, 2007 11:30 AM

Procter & Gamble is restating 11 years of ad-spending data in its annual report filed Aug. 28 to include expenditures such as in-store advertisements. At the same time, it will omit the salaries of advertising executives.

The restatement gives in-store advertising--everything from promotional display boxes to SmartSource instant-coupon machines and Wal-Mart TV--a place alongside other media spending in the nearly $8 billion budget of the world's biggest advertiser.

The result largely erases the decline of P&G's ad-spending-as-a-percent-of-sales ratio that in recent years worried some investors. Under the old accounting, P&G's ad-to-sales-ratio slipped from 10.7% in 2004 to 9.9% in 2006 (and possibly lower in 2007.) Under the new accounting, however, it looks like P&G was spending at about the same rate all along -- 10.6% of sales at the peak in 2004 and 10.4% for the past three years.

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