Diageo is a major alcoholic beverage company, which produces popular brands including Guinness, Baileys, and Smirnoff. They have just announced that they will be significantly reducing their investment into digital ad spend, largely because of complaints related to brand safety, ad fraud, and transparency.
This is a similar move to what P&G did earlier this year, though P&G has now stepped up their digital ad spend once again.
Chris Liversidge, the managing director of the digital marketing agency QueryClick, said, “Publishers are on the front line in the battle against advertising fraud. They have a duty to educate both brands and agencies on programmatic processes to ensure transparency.
However, brands can take steps to protect themselves too. First, where possible, they should separate their programmatic campaigns so they are given the consideration – and performance measures – their growing size warrants. Secondly, they should unbundle their agency relationship from the programmatic platform, to enable them to seek out independent providers that offer true transparency and protection from the risks of current programmatic campaigns.”
Diageo hasn’t stated how long they will have this reduced investment into digital, but they have said they have a strict set of requirements that need to be met. This includes zero tolerance of ad fraud, a viewability rate of at least 70%, and strict brand protection measures to be in place.