One of world’s biggest advertisers says it will avoid platforms that ‘create division’

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Unilever has threatened to withdraw its advertising from online platforms such as Facebook and Google if they fail to eradicate content which “create division in society and promote anger and hate” .



Keith Weed, chief marketing officer of the sprawling multinational, whose brands include Dove, Magnum, Persil and Marmite, said that online platforms were sometimes “little better than a swamp”. He told major advertising, media and tech firms gathered at a conference in California: “As one of the largest advertisers in the world, we cannot have an environment where our consumers don’t trust what they see online.”

He added: “We cannot continue to prop up a digital supply chain – one that delivers over a quarter of our advertising to our consumers – which at times is little better than a swamp in terms of its transparency.

“It is in the digital media industry’s interest to listen and act on this. Before viewers stop viewing, advertisers stop advertising and publishers stop publishing.” According to the analysts Pivotal, together Google and Facebook account for nearly three-quarters of all digital advertising in the US. In the UK the two have more than 60% of digital advertising and 90% of all new digital spending.

Unilever’s ultimatum comes as tech and social media firms are facing mounting criticism for failing to protect children and to erase fake news, hate speech and extremism. Last year Procter & Gamble, the owner of brands including Pantene and Pampers, issued a similar warningbefore cutting $100m (£72m) of digital ad spend without any negative impact on sales .

Weed said: “Fake news, racism, sexism, terrorists spreading messages of hate, toxic content directed at children – parts of the internet we have ended up with is a million miles from where we thought it would take us.”

Unilever is the world’s second biggest marketing spender, after P&G, and spent €7.7bn (£6.8bn) last year advertising its brands, which also include PG Tips, Vaseline and Bertolli.

Q&A What brands does Unilever own? Show Hide Unilever produces a host of well-known consumer brands. Food and drink

• Marmite, Hellman’s, Bertolli, Knorr, Bovril, Pot Noodle, Colman’s, Flora, Stork, I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter.

• PG Tips, Lyons, Lipton.

• Magnum, Ben & Jerry’s, Carte d’Or, Cornetto, Wall’s, Solero, Viennetta. Personal hygiene

• Dove, Sure, Lynx, Axe, Impulse, Simple, Pond’s, Vaseline, Brut, Radox.

• Timotei, Toni & Guy, TRESemmé, VO5 and Brylcreem. Laundry and cleaning

• Persil, Surf, Comfort, Cif, Domestos. Photograph: Nick Potts/PA

Google said in December it would hire thousands of new moderators after coming under fire for allowing child abuse videos and other offensive content to flourish on YouTube.



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Weed compared cleaning up the digital supply chain with efforts made by Unilever to find sustainable sources for its food ingredients and other raw materials and said the Anglo-Dutch business would no longer “invest in platforms or environments that do not protect our children or which create division in society, and promote anger or hate.”

He added: “We will prioritise investing only in responsible platforms that are committed to creating a positive impact in society.”

The company has trimmed its ad production as part of a cost-saving drive; it is making fewer TV ads and has halved the number of ad agencies it uses to 1,500.

Ian Whittaker and Annick Maas, analysts at Liberum, said online advertising platforms such as Facebook and YouTube faced “increasing difficulties in persuading advertisers that their product offers a brand safe environment”.

“Moreover, given the number of videos uploaded, there will always be an element of videos slipping through the net, which is likely to fuel further negative publicity. We therefore do not see this problem going away for the online platforms.”

They added: “It is clear advertisers are becoming increasingly wary of online’s quality and so are unlikely to shift money aggressively from TV to online as these concerns mount.”

The Liberum analysts said advertisers’ growing unease about tech companies’ lack of content control could provide an opportunity for broadcasters to take a bigger slice of the online video advertising market.

ITV has a 45% share of the UK TV ad market but only 6.5% of British online video advertising, where ad rates are much higher than in TV. Online could be a big driver of future profit growth for UK and European broadcasters, they said.

How Unilever spends its advertising budget

Ad agencies

Unilever is halving the 3,000 ad agencies it uses globally and further cutting costs by making 30% fewer ads. A third of Unilever’s advertising spend is digital

Unilever ad spend breakdown (UK) 2017



Total £129m

TV £91m

Outdoor (posters, billboards etc): £20m

Digital £13m

Press £4.3m

Cinema £1.4m

Unilever’s top 10 brands in ad spend terms (UK)

Dove £17.4m Walls £12m TRESemmé £9.5m Hellman’s £9.1m Persil £9m Lynx £7m Simple £4.9m Comfort £4.7m Ben & Jerry’s £4.7m Knorr £4.7m

World’s biggest advertisers

Procter & Gamble (P&G) $10.5bn Unilever $9.5bn Samsung $9bn Nestle $9bn L’Oreal $8.3bn

Sources: media agency estimates

