“There is no scale in multicultural media.”
Lashawnda Goffin, CEO of Colossus SSP, has heard that statement many times – and it simply isn’t true.
Yet the myth that minority-owned and targeted publishers can’t deliver the same large audiences as “general market” media remains pervasive, Goffin says on this week’s episode of AdExchanger Talks.
One reason the misperception persists is that problematic programmatic practices create an artificial roadblock to valuable supply sources.
Consider traffic shaping, a technical method used primarily by DSPs to counter bid duplication. Traffic-shaping algorithms can have a negative impact on minority-owned and niche publishers because they prioritize media owners with more ad impressions for sale, regardless of the number of actual ad slots available.
In other words, these algorithms are biased to reward volume, which can penalize smaller pubs.
Meanwhile, agencies and brands often gravitate toward bigger, more established players, including the ad tech partners they choose to integrate with.
“This creates an exclusive filter, unintentionally marginalizing minority-owned companies,” Goffin says. “Instead of fostering a diverse and inclusive ecosystem, the shrinking pool of preferred partners acts as a barrier to entry right off the bat.”
That said, there’s also good stuff happening behind the scenes. Many advertisers are “doing the work,” but they’re not necessarily speaking about it publicly, Goffin says.
“It’s evident that they’re just doing it – and we can see it in the way they work with us,” she says. “But there are some who could stand to probably do a little more and be a bit more intentional.”
Also in this episode: The beauty of content curation deals (and Colossus SSP’s recent partnership with SHE Media), the utter pointlessness of overzealous keyword blocklists, lessons learned from MediaMath’s bankruptcy – and stick around to the end for a treat that involves Whitney Houston’s 1987 smash hit “I Wanna Dance With Somebody.”
For more articles featuring Lashawnda Goffin, click here.
