Unilever to build approved global publisher network

Industry Contributor 29 Apr 2019 - 2 min read

Unilever to build approved global publisher network

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"Bots don't eat a lot of Ben & Jerry's," quipped Unilever's global CMO Keith Weed as the company unveiled its plans to build an online 'Trusted Publishers' network to cut bad actors out of the loop and only spend with platforms and publishers that meet strict criteria. Publishers that want a piece of Unilever's budget must go above and beyond viewability standards, verification and value standards and meet checks around ad fraud, brand safety, ad experience, traffic quality, ad formatting and data access. Those checks will be 'evolving and increasingly stringent', said Unilever, and 'eventually', most of its online ad spend will go only to approved publishers. (Unilever)

Key points:

Publisher network aims to work with ‘good’ global regional and local publishers and platforms
Unilever will work with agencies to execute, but wants more control and visibility over where ads appear.
"We want to know that real people, not robots, are enjoying our ads – bots don't eat a lot of Ben & Jerry's. We will champion the good actors that help us in this while diminishing the roles of the bad." - CMO Keith Weed
"Online advertising credibility is still a global, industry-wide problem and as the world’s second largest advertiser, we have a responsibility to use our scale and influence to address this issue." - CMO Keith Weed

It's sounding increasingly like "a trend". Diageo is taking a similar approach, P&G too and Vodafone. Billions of marketing dollars are heading in the direction of advertising quality – and more brands will inevitably follow their lead.

But it does goes to a strong point made by P&G's chief brand officer, Marc Pritchard last month: "Far too much of the intellectual firepower of our industry is being spent on fixing problems versus focusing on delighting the people we serve."

The question for Unilever is how soon it can execute - the company has not published a timetable and it won't say who's in or out. But the announcement should make publishers sit up. Via its responsibility framework, published last year, Unilever also said it 'will not invest in platforms or environments that do not protect our children or which promote anger, hate or create division in society'.

Unilever and P&G come under fire from the commentator with bite, Bob Hoffman, who has long argued the big vocal consumer companies are dithering and are not really serious about tackling the top-two serial repeat offenders in the digital media supply chain.