Hasta La Creative!

A big increase in ad spending last quarter helped Procter & Gamble Co. beat analyst expectations for sales growth, though it left absolute spending roughly flat for the year and was fueled in part by cuts in agency and production fees.

The world’s biggest ad spender expects to grow ad spending ahead of sales again for the just-begun fiscal year, and keep cutting agency-related costs, executives said Tuesday.

Overall, P&G hiked reported ad spending, which covers mainly media and sampling costs, by 2.8 percentage points as a share of sales, or around $450 million in the fourth quarter. That accounted for most of what Chief Financial Officer Jon Moeller said on a conference call with media was an increase of one percentage point in ad spending as a share of net sales for the full year ended June 30. But that was only enough to keep P&G spending in absolute terms roughly flat amid a currency-driven 8% decline in absolute sales to $65.3 billion.

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