Major media buyer GroupM has signed on to ad tech firm TripleLift's “Underrepresented Voices” initiative, becoming the first company of its kind to take part in the effort designed to increase programmatic ad spend with minority publishers.

Styled as an exchange traded deal (ETD)—a package of programmatic ad buys launched by TripleLift last year—“Underrepresented Voices” includes impressions running on more than 6,000 minority-owned and targeted websites, encompassing Black, Latinx, AAPI and LGBTQ+ communities.

The moves come as the WPP-owned GroupM pledged last month to increase its investments in Black-owned media over the next year. As part of the companies’ partnership, TripleLift will be waiving all fees associated with the programmatic buy to ensure that as many ad dollars as possible get into the hands of publishers.

“A key part of our mission is to be supportive of our publisher partners,” says TripleLift’s chief marketing officer Jordan Bitterman. "When they thrive, we thrive along with them."

Its “Underrepresented Voices” commitment is in support of its own in-house diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, he continues, which themselves are “often sparked” by TripleLift’s employee resource groups. “So, this is a great way to support the ambitions of our publishers, our employees and GroupM, all at once,” Bitterman says.

Beyond the “Underrepresented Voices” package, which features minority-owned and targeted websites exclusively, TripleLift says at least 20% of all the sites it currently inventories are woman- or minority-owned. From now on, GroupM will make the “Underrepresented Voices” package available to all of its brands, and it will be available to all buyers via TripleLift’s platform in perpetuity, the company confirms.

“For advertising to work better for people, we have to give our clients supplier diversity options to invest media dollars that in turn improve the ecosystem and drive positive cultural influence,” says Susan Schiekofer, GroupM’s U.S. chief digital investment officer. “The TripleLift initiative helps us reach this goal.”

The media giant’s partnership comes on the heels of its announcement last month that it would begin encouraging clients to invest at least 2% of their media budgets with diverse publishers, pledging that goal as part of its larger Media Inclusion Initiative.

Other media companies have taken similar steps towards racial and gender parity in their buying habits recently. IPG Mediabrands, for example, committed last month to invest no less than 5% in Black-owned media across all of its clients in the next two years.