• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, March 10, 2021

Interpublic Group’s Mediahub is hosting an event on Thursday (March 11) to connect multicultural media publishers with brands.

The agency says the idea is to drive more equitable and representative brand spending.

The agency isn’t the first to launch to multicultural marketplace and hopefully won’t be the last. Mindshare, its parent GroupM and Havas for example all announced plans for such market places last July. 

Mediahub says its event will “challenge assumptions and legacy planning and investment practices related to reaching diverse audiences and supporting diversity-owned publishers, spotlighting the business case and new best practices for working with these publishers to reach audiences authentically and at scale.”

The agency cites some alarming statistics.

While the multicultural population has grown to 40% of total U.S. population, only 5.2% of advertising budgets are invested in multicultural media and BIPOC-owned partners. (It cites an ANA 2019 report as the source.) Also, 41% of Black-owned businesses/enterprises, have been shuttered by COVID-19, furtherwidening the equity gap, per the agency.

 Publishers joining the event include:   

• Black Girl Digital, a premium influencer marketing agency 
• Being Latino, a social-first media company reaching Hispennials (Hispanic Millennial)
• Blavity Inc., the global Black digital media company for Millennials and Gen Z
• Gay Ad Network, a leading marketplace for connecting advertisers with LGBTQ+ consumers worldwide
• NGL Collective, the  independent Latinx media and entertainment solutions company
• Colossus SSP, a minority-owned digital advertising technology company