Many advertisers promised to diversify their media in 2020, spurred in large part by the Black Lives Matter movement.
But diverse media publishers haven’t seen all the ad budgets they were promised, said Maria Teresa Hernandez, SVP of brand partnerships and head of supplier diversity at Mirriad, an ad tech company that specializes in virtual product placement.
To help balance the scales, Mirriad announced a new industry initiative on Thursday to help create more ad opportunities across diverse publishers. The Diverse Media Alliance, as it’s called, currently includes Canela Media, LatiNation, BOMESI, NTERTAIN’s NEON16 and The Shade Room as launch partners.
This initiative is the “accountability arm” of the diverse media marketplace Mirriad has been building for the past five years, which today has more than 50 publishers. But it’s time to “make more noise,” Hernandez said, and “get more aggressive” about encouraging marketers to commit ad dollars to diverse publishers with multicultural audiences.
Diverse publishers try product placement
Even though many diverse-owned publishers reach multicultural audiences that are valuable to brands, many advertisers remain reluctant to invest in minority-owned media because of limited scale compared to more mainstream sites and streaming services.
Making matters worse, there has also been an unfortunate pushback against some companies adopting initiatives for diversity, equity and inclusion.
The goal of the Diverse Media Alliance, Hernandez said, is to draw buyer attention to the array of minority-owned publishers out there using technology like Mirriad’s to create scalable ad opportunities. The Alliance also wants feedback and participation from publishers about the data, innovation and research needed to incentivize media buyers to spend more with diverse publishers.
Virtual product placement technology can help diverse publishers generate theoretically limitless ad space by converting their content into ad opportunities.
A cereal, for example, could choose to buy in-show placements by overlaying its branding onto boxes in kitchen scenes throughout a show, in addition to traditional 15- or 30-second commercial spots. One real example is Charmin Ultra Strong, which uses Mirriad’s tech to place ads in bathroom scenes throughout The Shade Room’s “Drip Codez,” a series exploring celebrity homes.
“By joining forces with other diverse suppliers through the Diverse Media Alliance, we’re increasing our exposure and attracting new ad spend from brands,” Joshua Ott, head of revenue at The Shade Room, told AdExchanger.
Other publishers share this sentiment.
By creating more ad opportunities within their own content, diverse publishers can give media buyers a compelling opportunity to honor their ad spend commitments to minority-focused content owners, said Andrés Rincón, SVP of sales at Canela Media.
This collective exists to “make sure budgets meant for diverse media companies are actually being distributed accordingly,” he said. Otherwise, “there’s always going to be an excuse,” he said, such as lack of scale, not enough inventory or too few ad format options.
The hope, Rincón said, is for Canela to generate incremental ad revenue by encouraging more advertisers to buy virtual product placement ads.
Upfront and onward
The timing of this initiative is no coincidence, either.
Canela is still in the midst of finalizing its upfront deals, Rincón said, and Mirriad’s initiative is a “huge opportunity for us to present new, innovative” streaming ad formats.
The Diverse Media Alliance is in its beginning stages, so it’s still too soon to determine its impact on ad spend. But so far, Rincón said, “it’s been really well-received” among Canela’s advertisers.
Mirriad’s initiative is also helping drive new buyer demand for other diverse publishers, Hernandez said.
The end goal, she said, is to “drive as much visibility as possible to diverse communities” within the advertising ecosystem.
