Keith Weed, Unilever CMO, believes that many platforms have not yet caught up to the innovative technologies of today. As a result, many of these platforms are serving poor quality advertisements to consumers, with little recourse.

Ongoing Topic of Conversation

Procter & Gamble CMO Marc Pritchard has voiced many of these same concerns. Generally speaking, Pritchard is focused on 4 ways in which brands should rethink their current digital marketing tactics:

1. Transparency
2. Ad Quality
3. Mass One-to-One Marketing
4. Messages For Good

To learn more about Pritchard’s digital marketing strategies, please read through our article, “Digital Marketing Advice From Procter & Gamble’s Chief Brand Officer”.

While Weed and Pritchard share similar concerns, they are each handling these concerns in very different ways. Pritchard has been much more forward about failures within the digital advertising industry, and has presented an ultimatum to platforms that facilitate such services.

This ultimatum basically consists of the platforms correcting their mistakes and producing a better performing platform, or risk immediately losing business from major companies like Procter & Gamble.

A New Approach

Rather than publicly address platforms with harsh ultimatums, Weed believes it is in the best interest of all (the company, the platform, and the consumer) for large corporations to work alongside these platforms to create a better experience for the end user.

In his own words, Weed expressed to Adweek that, “This has gone beyond us talking internally within the industry about the efficiencies of the media supply chain. This is now impacting trust as a societal level, which I think brings great urgency.”

Even with Weed’s compassionate understanding toward platforms, Unilever has begun shifting their ad dollars around. Weed freely admits that the company is indeed moving money around to spaces that meet their higher standards in the viewability and third-party verification of digital ads.

In the end, what matters most is the user and their experience. Both Weed and Pritchard are trying their very best to better this experience, despite their different approaches. However, their efforts are likely to produce results that all digital advertisers can enjoy going forward.