A lot was made of this Wall Street Journal article that stated Proctor & Gamble was cutting back on its Facebook advertising because the ads were too targeted and had limited effectiveness. It was even brought up several times during the Radio Show in Nashville last week.
During Advertising Week yesterday, CMO Marc Pritchard said P&G is not cutting back its Facebook advertising, it’s getting smarter about how to use the social media website. AdWeek has the story about Pritchard clarifying the Wall Street Journal report. “The headline was technically accurate but a little misleading. We weren’t getting more reach. We asked Facebook, ‘How much reach can we get on your platform?’ We were making choices on targeting that were too narrow in some cases.”
Pritchard says P&G moved to dividing up its spend, according to specific brands. AdWeek reports Pritchard said that by opening up wider parameters for ad targeting, the company “can get 70 to 80 million users. The question with targeting is this: ‘It’s not if—it’s how many.’ Every audience is a target, so you need to think about how many. If you want to reach all category buyers of toothpaste, it’s almost everyone. If you want to reach pregnant women in their first trimester, it’s a much different level of targeting.”
