Unilever’s Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, Keith Weed, has revealed that the Anglo-Dutch FMCG giant spends nearly a quarter of its global advertising budget on digital media but warned that the industry must improve to win further spend.

In an interview with Business Insider, Weed admitted that digital media is a growing priority for the company, with spend up 4 percent in 2015 versus a year earlier. Furthermore, digital spend is closer to the 50 percent mark in more digitally advanced markets such as China and the US.

However, Unilever’s recent return to zero-based budgeting may well affect spend going forward, forcing digital marketing platforms to prove their value. According to Business Insider, Weed is calling for social media and search giants to provide third-party verification of viewability data in order to justify Unilever’s ad spend with them.

And as the second biggest spender on advertising in the world, no doubt Unilever’s business is worth fighting for. Current industry standards for video ad viewability require half of the pixels in view for two consecutive seconds, which Weed protests is simply not good enough. Weed pointed to Facebook, Google and Twitter as platforms that are leading the way, all three have partnered with Moat to provide third-party viewability verification.