RuhRoh

P&G is one of the most sophisticated advertisers in the world. You have to be, to sell soap.

Tired of paying for “bot”-clicks and poorly placed ads, P&G cut over $100 million out of its digital advertising spend in the fourth quarter, and nothing happened.

As P&G CFO Jon Moeller said on the recent earnings call: “We didn’t see a reduction in the growth rate… What that tells me is that that spending that we cut was largely ineffective.”

This should be a warning to the advertising companies – Google, Facebook, etc.

Edit: During the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, Unilever’s chief marketing and communications officer Keith Weed reportedly asserted that some 60% of online traffic is “bots”.