Why media buying must evolve to meet diversity commitments

Over the past 18 months the advertising industry has rallied around the idea of “accountable advertising”—supporting underserved communities, and funding high-quality content from diverse publishers, creators and agencies, all without sacrificing profits. While members of the advertising community have supported diversity in their creative, it’s only recently that advertiser interest in allocating portions of ad budgets to publishers of color has increased. But whether advertisers will meet their stated targets for 2022 expenditures with minority-owned publishers remains to be seen. According to eMarketer, in 2022 64% of U.S. ad dollars will go to non-editorial public platforms like the “triopoly” of Facebook, Google and Amazon, with the remaining 36% left to be spent across all other media. While in 2020 Nielsen reported that only 2% of U.S. advertising dollars were spent with Black-owned media, in the past year brands have committed to minimum spends ranging from 2% to 5% with minority-owned media. However, many advertisers and agencies are learning that their ad buying systems are not designed to allocate spending to include the additional factor of publisher ownership. In many cases, site ownership is not even available within the open market buying platforms. To date, both the social platforms and the advertisers who fund them have eschewed accountability for the quality and source of the content they publish. In addition to the perpetuation of media power into the hands of the few, ad buying has developed in a direction that favors traffic and reach and disregards quality, utility and impact of editorial. Many advertisers have deprioritized quality in favor of efficiency. This strategy limits minority-owned media to the confines of traditional buying behaviors and practices. While advertisers and agencies face a challenge as they move from intent to action, recent attention to funding of diverse publishers and the opportunity for advertisers to invest in a more equitable media landscape, are cause for optimism. Empowering advertisers to increase investment in minority-owned media In January 2021 She Media launched Meaningful Marketplaces to match advertisers with both the audiences they intend to reach and with the publishers whose businesses they commit to support, enabling brands to invest their ad dollars directly with their affinity group of choice. Meaningful Marketplaces is under the umbrella of the She Media Collective, consisting of publishers, creators and experts who produce premium content and community for both niche and mass audiences, and who identify as minority-owned media. Through Meaningful Marketplaces, advertisers can choose to purchase media with diverse ownership and editorial perspective. As the advertising industry continues to voice its interest in supporting and investing in diverse publishers, She Media is tracking progress with Meaningful Marketplaces as our survey panel and focus group. It seems to be paying off: From 2020 to 2021, She Media saw demand for minority-owned media triple, from less than 2% of all general market RFPs to more than 10%. Despite the challenges of expanding buying practices in real time, several corporations are embracing accountable advertising in 2022. Specifically, SHE Media secured sponsorship of an educational health series, Black Mind and Body, on sheknows.com while investing media dollars in Black-owned publishers represented in SHE Media’s Meaningful Marketplace. This illustrates how advertisers can support critical editorial themes while investing in premium minority publishers, without sacrificing performance to bottom line. Media buying processes must continue to shift Ad-buying systems and technologies were built for investment across mass media, with a degree of audience targeting, creative standardization and frequency-capping that eliminates much of the available inventory proffered by mid-sized media. These tactics were created to help brands and agencies sift through immense inventory in the open marketplace, but cannot easily identify or target ads based on the profile of the media owner, only the audiences that the media reaches. While the early days of 2022 indicate that we will progress in distributing dollars more equitably, advertisers will need to bend their own rules, put a dollar value on accountable advertising and invest in marketing innovation. In addition to audience efficiency offered by non-editorial social platforms, advertisers will have to decide that increasing earning opportunities for underserved publishers is, in fact, good for business. Strategic direction needs to follow through in practice There will always be a more efficient, traditionally cheaper way to reach a target consumer outside of premium editorial environments. But if advertisers continue to set the bar at “brand safe” as the only indication of publisher quality, we will continue to fund a triopoly of companies rather than independent publishers and creators. To raise earning opportunities for minority-owned media, we must prioritize the audience, the editorial and the content source. With the Meaningful Marketplaces and agencies, accelerators and investment firms who emerged to provide marketing and content solutions to challenge the status quos, 2022 is bound to be a year in which we see if corporate intent can drive action and impact. About SHE Media She Media is a a top-5 Lifestyle reaching over 100 million monthly visitors (per comScore). She Media focuses on the power of content to move our culture forward through the celebration of passion and purpose. We believe that media companies can and should be a force for good in the world. Ranging from food and family to health, career and entertainment, our rich collection of content is curated from thousands of diverse sources. Composed of a community of creators and hand-picked publishers within the She Media Collective and the flagship brands, SheKnows, BlogHer, Stylecaster and Soaps, we produce digital and live media content that connects and inspires millions.

Why media buying must evolve to meet diversity commitments

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