GOOGLE ADMITS (again) TO FRAUDULENT ADVERTISING; (P&G to be applauded for Marketing ROI--read why?)
The following article, by title---is a must read for all CPG shareholders: ("Google Pays up for Fake Traffic"). It was released on a Saturday AM, during August. This is classic crisis management by Google, with the WSJ, unfortunately, playing along. The PR playbook on releasing BAD news, dictates (page 1), that BAD news should be released to your "press buddies" on a Saturday AM, during the Summer. Why? Because a vast % of C-level execs (and investors) are away to their 2nd homes on August Saturdays. Thus, if the BAD-news-releasing company gets lucky, they have minimized the damage to result from disclosures such as Google's admission of massive (Billions-$) of dollars in digital ad fraud. With this magnitude of fiscal ROI- mismanagement on the part of CMO's--and their "agency-pals", my question is this; "Why are CPG shareholders tolerating this continued ineptitude? (Yes, ineptitude). Let me expand upon this by posing an analogy. Mr or Ms shareholder---how would you handle this with your CFO, if they were continually investing in Funds, which were known to be plagued by this amount of fraud? (Most of us, already know the answer to this). What is further amazing is that, in an effort to resolve this massive problem, the CEOs & CMOs of far-too-many CPGs delegate the solution back to the very people who are responsible for creating the problem, and thus benefit immensely from its perpetuation. Now that truly defies logic to me. Think I'm exaggerating? Here's a test for marketing-tech/analytics companies, who KNOW they can help solve this shareholder-draining problem. Do this. On Monday, try to contact any of the CMO's for the fortune 100 CPGs. Go ahead. Give it a try. If a miracle happens, you might be able to get through the maize of screeners to even reach their office. If you are miraculously able to get there, and begin to explain how your disruptive technology can help the CMO solve this massive ad- fraud problem---guess what is likely to happen? (You won't believe it). You will be relayed to the very agencies who are responsible for the fraud, and benefit the most from its continuation. Its the ultimate in the "Foxes being allowed to guard the henhouse." But worse actually, as the "Foxes" are then asked to be the consulants, who are further entrusted to figure out the "missing eggs" problem. Shareholders--when are you going to step in with more force? Most CPG growth is essentially stalled. Same for your investments in way-too-many instances. Advertising/marketing $ are supposed to be the ROI-engine which drives growth. Hmm...? I wonder why growth is stalled for so many CPGs. Please refer back to today's Google "Fake Traffic" article, or maybe the recent disclosure by Facebook that; " We may have overstated video ad views by up to 80%. " With this as a backdrop, one major CPG is a positive exception. P&G's marketing heads should be applauded, for their postive marketing ROI results this past quarter, as they yanked over $100million from digital/social, and invested these precious shareholder funds in more ROI-productive advertising/marketing mediums. They summed up their logic by the following paraphrased quote; "We prefer to target our advertising dollars to humans, not robots." That one sentence says it all. Hats-off to P&G. When will other CMOs, and shareholders follow this same logic?