Neutronian on Tuesday launched NQI Minority Ownership Verification, a standard approach to validating and scoring companies based on minority ownership.
Undertone’s Uplift Collective is the first to allow independent verification of its network. It will allow media buyers to verify that a publisher domain is minority owned.
Sometimes companies, mostly when trying to earn federal contracts, will represent themselves as something that they are not to get funding, says Dan Aks, president of Undertone, a Perion Network company.
“We wanted to make sure we are not victims of this because we are trying to do something good for minority owners,” Aks said. “It has purpose for us, our community and employees enjoy doing something beyond just advertising. Directing funds toward people who are underrepresented is very important—ethically and legally.”
Uplift Collective, a subnetwork of owners, members of a group that aims to support minority communities. The group also tries to help certain causes like keeping the earth healthy. Significant contributions are made based on gross revenue to charities of choice by one of the media property owners.
The offering is meant to encourage brands and agencies to pick more diverse partners for their vendor relationships. The standardized procedure and vetting process that Neutronian applies, minority ownership and inclusiveness will now be much more transparent.
Ask said Undertone wants to support brands throughout the marketing process, from awareness to purchases. It created a retail group within Undertone that has separate account management people to serve the companies.
“Creating a big retail group is part of our vision,” he said. “We’re also experimenting with sound.”
Sound can create an emotional connection between the brand and consumer.
The NQI Minority Ownership Verification and other certifications that Neutronian offers will support Undertone’s vision.
Kim Leone, Undertone CMO, said the company has partnered with Neutronian for a variety of reasons in addition to the NQI Minority Ownership Verification, such as privacy certification for a product rolled out last year.
The minority ownership verification process requires the collection of data from publicly available sources for dissonance testing and scoring against a defined set of characteristics.
The NQI Minority Ownership Verification is applicable to any type of partner that a company might leverage such as the digital media companies that an advertiser engages with to run their advertising campaigns or the data providers that an agency utilizes for campaign targeting. In addition to minority ownership verification, Neutronian plans to roll out other verification services in the future to address similar business needs such as company background validation and small business verification.