Two months ago, it was P&G which fired the first shot across the "adtech" bow when not long after it announced it was slashing its digital ad spending because it thought it was not getting the kind of return on investment it desired, it made a striking discovery: "We didn't see a reduction in the growth rate." CFO Jon Moeller said "What that tells me is that that spending that we cut was largely ineffective."

Speaking to the WSJ, P&G CEO David Taylor echoed Moeller when he explained that cuts on digital ads are part of a larger strategy to more quickly halt spending on things – from ad campaigns to product development programs - that aren't working: "we got some data that said either it was in a bad place or it was not effective," Taylor said of the digital cuts. "And we shut it down and said, 'We're not going to follow a formula of how much you spend or share of voice. We want every dollar to add value for the consumer or add value for our stakeholders."