Carolina Abenante and Jessica Hwang: Ensuring a Future of Inclusivity With Today’s Automated Reconciliation
It’s not enough to trust the good intentions of inclusivity commitments. The team at NYIAX shares how media teams can verify that those pledges make it to market.
By CArolina Abenante and Jessica Hwang
In digital media of the past, reconciling ad transactions to ensure that brands were receiving what they paid for when they invested in advertising was a ridiculously thankless and analog process that most often fell to media planners and buyers. In recent years, platforms that automate reconciliation have liberated those experts to do the work they aimed to do when they entered the field of advertising—to develop and drive innovative campaigns that deliver the highest value for the brands and consumers they serve.
Today, automated reconciliation has an even greater value to our industry and our culture, which is the power to prove how digital advertising campaigns are delivering on industrywide “inclusivity” commitments.
“Committing to inclusive media spend and actually holding oneself accountable are two very different things.”
From Discovery to Reconciliation
Buyers have primarily used platforms and two-sided marketplaces such as ours at NYIAX to discover, execute, and support compliance and management of contracts, as well as to automate billing reconciliation. The automated platform-based approach has become popular because it is able to ensure compliance with a multitude of contract parameters, since all IO/campaign terms are stored in the platform, flagging any noncompliance in real time. This means no more delivery surprises or large makegoods. It also means that if a campaign calls for diverse audiences, this must be delivered against, or be revealed as noncompliant.
Understanding Inclusivity Commitments
Since the killing of George Floyd, the 4A’s, the ANA, and many of their member brands and agencies began making “inclusivity commitments,” ranging from HR changes that support the recruitment of more diverse talent to public commitments to increase media spend on minority-owned media and/or content that reaches a more diverse audience. What drove the commitments? In short, a collective acknowledgment of systemic racism and exclusion and a strong lean into a more equitable future.
“While we have solved for proving compliance, it’s key we also solve for setting proper goals from the start.”
What Inclusivity Means From a Media Planning Perspective
Our industry’s insistence on greater inclusive media-spend thresholds empowers media planners and buyers to lead the “inclusivity movement.” How? When a brand insists that their campaigns reach more diverse audiences, media experts can do what they do best: Ensure that those campaigns not only deliver on those inclusivity goals but also set appropriate KPIs to measure their success.
This is, again, where an accountable two-sided marketplace supports the human effort. In the case of our publisher marketplace, we host a multitude of premium publishers across all categories, including multicultural. This assists in publisher discovery as advertisers build out RFPs and media plans, all in one place, making it easy to track where ads are running. The platform then helps create contracts with a variety of diverse publishers in a clean, transparent process. The compliance solution ensures that campaigns are running within all the agreed-upon contract terms with these publishers.
While we have solved for proving compliance, it’s key we also solve for setting proper goals from the start. While some agencies have recently upped their commitments to inclusion from 2 to 5 percent, we have to ask if that is high enough, especially when considering our nation is over 40% multicultural. The good news is that many are leading the change, such as Marc Pritchard, Chief Brand Officer for P&G. Pritchard has now said on several occasions that his company “wants to outspend everyone else in the industry on minority-owned media.” If others follow, agencies will have much more license and capital to drive inclusivity forward.
“Our industry’s insistence on greater inclusive media-spend thresholds empowers media planners and buyers to lead the ‘inclusivity movement’ by ensuring that those campaigns not only deliver on those inclusivity goals but also set appropriate KPIs to measure their success.”
Walking the Walk
Committing to inclusive media spend and actually holding oneself accountable are two very different things. This past May 2021, as detailed by The Wall Street Journal, two companies owned by media mogul Byron Allen filed a lawsuit against McDonald’s Corp., accusing the fast-food giant of discriminating against Black-owned media companies because the brand’s 2019 U.S. TV media spend of $1.6 billion included less than $5 million, or 0.31%, spent on Black-owned media.
While a judge dismissed Allen’s suit due to lack of evidence, McDonald’s has since made a commitment to more than double the advertising dollars it devotes to media companies with diverse ownership over the next four years. In fact, the chain said that by 2024, it would increase to 10% the portion of its national advertising budget going to groups owned by Black, Hispanic, women, and other underrepresented groups, up from 4% today. McDonald’s said its spending with Black-owned media groups would rise to 5% of national ad spend by 2024 from 2% today." In short, positive change is taking place.
Assuming inclusive media goals are set to allocate an appropriate percentage of advertising budget toward reaching underrepresented groups, automated reconciliation not only ensures compliance in real time to quickly resolve targeting issues but also allows buyers to discover inventory from more diverse-owned media publishers and those connecting brands with multicultural audiences.
Clearly, undoing systemic racism requires more than changes in media-spending practices. However, brands do have massive power and influence. As the McDonald’s case underscores, lack of spending on minority media economically discriminates against diverse-owned publishers. There are several things a brand can do to lead the way to a more inclusive future:
Up your inclusivity commitments across the board
Begin making larger investments in minority-owned media
Automate the reconciliation of these investments
Share your successes, learnings, and case studies with others in the industry so the value of inclusivity becomes common knowledge versus something new
Together, as an industry, we have the power to change the way brands connect with the fastest-growing consumer segment in the U.S. It begins with commitment and strengthens with accountability.
January 11, 2022