Media ad dollars are increasingly favoring programmatic platforms, such as automated buying. The trend was central to Disney’s upfront pitch and nearly 30% of 2022 deals were programmatic guaranteed, according to a survey by the Trade Desk. But while massive media companies may encourage marketers to automate buys across their portfolio of assets, not all media partners find the method ideal or even allow it.

Black-owned media company Revolt doesn’t permit programmatic buying for its content, said CEO Detavio Samuels this week during Ad Age’s State of TV Advertising conference. Rather, Samuels asks brands to conduct deals directly with Revolt so that they fully understand the company’s opportunities for tailored messaging to its Black audience.

“There’s a responsibility to our consumers to make sure that the brands that show up on our platform—[consumers] know and can trust and believe that those are brands that are committed to the community and are investing in the community in a real way,” said Samuels. “What we never wanted to do was build [programmatic] pipes, allow brands to pop in, spend a thousand dollars and then tout and brag about how they were spending with Black-owned media or spending with Revolt when it wasn’t a real commitment. We see programmatic as an opportunity for brands to get away with performative activism.”

Although some brands have long been investing in the diverse media space, the murder of George Floyd in 2020 inspired an industry-wide movement to be more inclusive of specifically Black-owned media in ad budgets. Ad Age recently found that while overall ad spend in that market had grown from 2021 to 2022, investments in Black-owned media made up only 1.16% of the total ad ecosystem measured by the Standard Media Index.

Read more: How big brands are spending on Black-owned media

And as a growing portion of those investments moves through programmatic platforms, media partners have less visibility into who is spending and how. Lynnwood A. Bibbens, founder and CEO of airport TV network ReachTV, requires programmatic transactions to go through private marketplaces, or PMPs, allowing the publisher to control the inventory being sold with a select group of advertisers.

“What we need to do is demand that they be PMPs,” said Bibbens. “In a PMP, you can control that entire environment, you can actually bring the brand in—we actually picked the creative that went in that made sense for our audience. And then we turned [programmatic] off with pricing and structures and everything around it.”

Had that deal been done solely through programmatic, Bibbens said, it would have cost ReachTV 2% of its ad revenue and removed 20% of what the brand ended up spending in additional investment.

Watch: Ad sales leaders and more discuss future of TV

Gary Coichy, founder and CEO of Pod Digital Media, similarly said that direct investment, in which brands can discuss opportunities and strike long-term deals with media partners, is ideal, as it helps to not just boost the individual campaign but the media company’s overall offering. It also provides Pod Digital Media the means to create new content, expand franchises and further compensate talent, while also allowing the company to “think much more strategically in the type of RFPs and efforts and strategy that we’re putting forth in a way where we’ll see some success,” Coichy said.

The state of the market

As uncertain economic conditions and the threat of a recession loom over this year’s upfront market, media buyers predict deals may be slower and softer than in recent years. Over the past months, a fear among diverse-owned media has been that shrinking budgets may also shrink the already-fractional dollars set aside for DE&I investment.

ReachTV’s Bibbens doesn't anticipate the economy having a negative impact on the network's ad revenue, although he partly attributed that to the rise in post-pandemic travel.

“This year is the first year I think we’ll have mostly all of the agencies book upfronts with us, when in previous years, we didn’t have all of the agencies,” said Bibbens. “We’ve been educating each agency on what we’re really offering and getting that seat at the damn table so we can explain what our business is.”

Read more: DE&I media investments may be impacted by the economy

Revolt’s Samuels said the economy shouldn’t be the determining factor as to whether a brand invests in Black-owned media, regardless of the year’s budget.

“Lots of brands, once they get the opportunity to find an excuse to not spend will find that excuse,” said Samuels. “When corporate America wants to do something, they will. I fully believe that people will try to use the recession as an excuse to not spend, but for me, it doesn’t cut it. If you really believe in this consumer, if you really believe in this culture, if you really believe in equity, then there should be zero excuses for cutting what is 1% or 2% of your budget.”

Also read: TikTok videos come to airports in ReachTV deal

While many of the conversations around inclusion in advertising have focused on diverse-owned media specifically, major media companies have also developed increased initiatives around diverse productions, talent and audiences. Companies such as Warner Bros. Discovery and Disney have dedicated teams in their sales divisions to shepherd conversations about inclusion in ad deals, many of which go to programs meant to boost diverse production staffing or expansion of content representative of multicultural audiences.

“I was worried, candidly, that when the marketplace became more complicated and dollars were cut back, that people would lose focus and prioritization of what they were doing in the space,” said Rita Ferro, president of advertising at Disney during Ad Age's conference. “I’ve been hugely and pleasantly surprised that that’s actually not what we’re seeing.”

Ferro said that Disney aims to have $1 billion invested in the company’s DE&I content and initiatives by 2025, and that every deal struck with Disney includes an aspect of diverse investment. The company also announced partnerships with Group Black, Equal Pride and others to create branded content this year for advertisers.

Similarly, Warner Bros. Discovery devoted a segment of its upfront presentation to a newly formed division of its sales team devoted to DE&I initiatives. The team will work with brands on programs to create content with diverse teams as well as invest in DE&I-targeted content sponsorships across the company’s portfolio.