A new program from global media consultancy MediaSense will evaluate brands’ effectiveness in supporting diverse-owned media and reaching multicultural audiences.

The Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Audit moves beyond simply measuring the audience reached by a marketer’s media buying and takes stock of the entire process, including planning, data implementation, ad technologies and partnerships. The program was created in alignment with the World Federation of Advertisers’ Responsible Media guidelines and helps to pinpoint areas of improvement for DE&I within a media strategy.

Diverse-owned publishers have expressed frustrations about the lack of support from agencies and advertisers, many of whom made sweeping commitments to upping support in recent years. Multiple agencies and consultancies, including Omnicom, Publicis and various industry conglomerates, have launched programs to address the disparity within media, mostly focused on creating relationships between publishers and advertisers.

“One of the main challenges facing brands in 2022 and beyond is how to improve diversity without negatively impacting effectiveness,” said Dan Brown, director and practice lead at MediaSense, in a statement. “By conducting a diagnostic evaluation of DE&I, we can identify opportunities to improve diversity whilst protecting the quality and efficiency of media investment.”

The DE&I Audit will provide advertisers with data in key areas, including campaign reach among diverse audiences and support for diverse-owned and run publishers. MediaSense will utilize its in-house analytics platform, DiPA, to collect data for the evaluation, as well as analysis from partner agency Legacy Media, which specializes in environmental, social and governance diagnostics for the media industry.

The audit is paid for and elected by clients directly, who then grant MediaSense access to their ad stack and media agency. Depending on the client's goals, the audit may be incorporated into larger evaluations and is additionally available as part of an analytics suite that MediaSense already conducts with clients.

The program’s launch partner is Sanofi, the French pharmaceutical and healthcare company that's a client of Omnicom MediaGroup. MediaSense will work with OMG to directly access Sanofi's ad tech and data ecosystem to gather insights into its DE&I effectiveness.

“DE&I is a key pillar of our Responsible Media framework (alongside sustainability and brand safety). We are partnering with MediaSense to better understand how effective we are in this area and create both a benchmark and framework for improvement,” said Prasad Ghag, global head of media, digital and strategic planning at Sanofi, in a statement.