Pritchard Issues Warning To Tech Platforms Over Brand Safety

Procter & Gamble’s Marc Pritchard has issued a warning to the tech platforms that the company will “vote with its dollars” unless meaningful efforts are made to clean up the digital advertising ecosystem.

Speaking at the Association of National Advertisers media conference in the US yesterday, the company’s chief brand officer pointed to the “gold standard” set by newspapers and other media such as TV and radio.  

Mr Pritchard said: “We’ve been tolerant for too long in the digital media world. It’s not acceptable to have brands showing up where opioids are being offered, illegal drugs are promoted, abhorrent behaviour is present or violence is seen.”

“The apologies are heartfelt and appreciated but that’s not good enough. We’ve been told it’s not intentional and we know it’s not. We’ve heard ‘not many people saw it’, that’s not the point,” Marketing Week reported.

“Every platform has a responsibility to control their content…None of us should ever have to worry that our brands end up anywhere near that kind of horrible content.”

“Rather than calling for endless retrofitting and clean-up, I’d like to offer a new approach. It’s time to invest our brainpower into an ecosystem that builds in quality, civility, transparency, privacy and control from the very start.”

He added: “At minimum, we want P&G brands to operate in a highly efficient, quality, civil, transparent and privacy compliant media supply chain,” he concluded. “Ideally we will all take these steps and work together to create an entirely new media supply chain for our industry that creates greater value and trust for the consumers we serve.”

Marketing Week reported that P&G has also warned that it will “vote with its dollars” by investing its media budgets into companies who follow its roadmap.

Mr Pritchard has previously criticised the digital advertising environment in a seminal speech in 2017 in which he described the media supply chain as “murky at best and fraudulent at worst.”