P&G CMO: Was It Bain All the Time?

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Is the timeline too coincidental?

Six weeks after Bain Consulting releases its brief : “Online or Traditional Advertising, What’s Better for Brands?”

P&G’s Marc Pritchard takes the stage at the IAB.

Using that IAB venue, the CMO of the largest advertiser on earth delivers a tongue-lashing of the likes never been seen, citing: “75 cents of every dollar P&G spent in digital media never reached the consumer.”

Then the ground shifted.

At dmexco, P&G’s Pritchard did it again.

Relentless fact-based, tongue-lashing.

But the question is: was it Bain all the time?

In the Bain Consulting brief “Online or Traditional Advertising, What’s Better for Brands?” Bain partner Kenji Govaers reveals the highlights of the Bain study:

  • There are different ways to compare traditional media and digital media.
  • Much of the discussion is usually about engagement and targeting.
  • But Bain research has found that, actually, if you look at it from a recall and a reach perspective, traditional media is actually quite efficient.

Bain whispers: traditional media more efficient.

Or is it: the agencies for P&G have their head stuck in the sand?

According to Mark Ritson’s recap of the best panel from Advertising Week called “Media Buying’s Deadly Sins”…the bad actors = five advertising holding companies.

Wow.

He’s actually right (at least for now).

But the most fraudulent segment of marketing (according to P&G) isn’t completely evil. Furthermore, it (just like evil) can be navigated.

“Programmatic display is like going to a knife-fight every day,” said COO of C3 Metrics advertising attribution data cloud Jeff Greenfield. “If you have a viewability tag running with every impression…which has to fight that technological knife fight in a field laden with fraud…and you can close loop those buys with false positive corrected outcome signals, you can do it. But what I just said is barely understood by any marketer and less than 10% of marketing technologists.”

But Bain, got it mostly right.

To navigate the knife fight in digital, you have to navigate five types of fraud.

Discover the five types of fraud plus a few more things here.