Supporting Buyers’ Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Ambitions in the Programmatic Ecosystem

When Magnite was born out of a merger between two large ad tech players, we committed to a strong focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion. Now, with over 900 employees, we’ve created an environment that accommodates and celebrates our diverse backgrounds and cultures. Magnite recognizes there are publishers working hard to develop media environments for people to be authentically themselves, bringing unique voices to public spaces. This creates the opportunity for brands to reach those diverse groups of people to continue the positive impact on the diverse communities they serve. Magnite supports diverse brands and publishers so they can continue to prosper and bring their unique products and perspectives to the public.

To manage and scale DE&I investments, brands need to consider the different behaviors of diverse audiences, identify and access brand-suitable inventory, and leverage the right data to reach them effectively in the right formats. For instance, Nielsen highlighted how media engagement is highest among Black audiences, with Black audiences over-indexing as streaming viewers, particularly with free ad-supported services (FASTs) like Tubi and Pluto. Similarly, the purchasing power of these groups should not be underestimated.  For example, the purchasing power of Hispanics is expected to hit $2.6 trillion by 2025.

Making authentic connections programmatically

The benefits of media buying through fewer sources are well publicized, with supply-path optimization a key trend in advertising. These include the reduction in costs, supply chain transparency, reduced carbon footprint, and improved access to the required inventory and audiences. This is even more important for DE&I marketers and publishers where such audiences are often even harder to reach. Programmatic tech is becoming a key ally in bringing diverse buyers and sellers closer together, enabling diverse-focused marketers to make authentic connections with users efficiently. As a result, diverse-focused publishers can continue to fund content for underrepresented audiences.

The challenges facing DE&I marketers and publishers are also well publicized. Advertisers may have unintentionally overly prohibitive keyword blocklists that can exclude supply that would actually benefit them but also lack the resources to verify diverse-owned websites thoroughly. This can lead to missing out on performant inventory, impacting the potential publisher yields, and, ultimately, missing out on creating authentic connections with consumers.

At Magnite we recognize that achieving DE&I targets can be challenging for marketers and agencies who have previously had to curate thousands of diverse-owned websites, which involves a lot of operational lift, including everything from verification through to campaign execution. Magnite has taken on this challenge and offers marketers scaled access to high-quality, verified media across websites and video environments operated by under-represented groups. Magnite is deeply integrated with top bellwether publisher portfolios reaching 90% of DEI supply across the web (Jounce Media, Sep 2023), allowing us to connect buyers to DEI audiences through a single source of supply.

This curated access to supply is complemented by private marketplace deal (PMP) capabilities Magnite has with specialized publishers such as Essence, Revolt, Revry, and El Comercio. Specialized publishers is where the intimacy and specificity is, allowing marketers to build out their accurate audiences further. By leveraging our supply pipes and operational capabilities, we’re able to deliver impressions from trusted, quality sources of diverse-owned media to buyers.

Matching culturally relevant content to audiences

Finding the right path to inventory can also entail having access to the data that can amplify the performance of that inventory to optimize budgets further. Targeting ads to specific diverse groups can be sensitive and hard to get right if there is insufficient or inaccurate data to represent segments, which risks missing relevant audiences.

With continued signal loss in the digital ecosystem, applying first-party data to inventory is an accurate way of reaching target audiences. However, scaling campaigns using first-party data can be tricky, possibly involving the use of a clean room in order to model known audiences against a publisher’s users to find lookalike audiences. For brands without first-party data, there are a few options. They could negotiate PMPs with quality publishers that have a known and engaged audience that fits the brand’s DE&I requirements.

However, in order to scale DE&I campaigns seamlessly across publishers, brands should look to those with curated access to quality DE&I publishers and approved third-party data providers of DEI audiences. For instance, Magnite works with third-party data providers that provide reliable segments of DEI-related audiences.

Simplified DE&I campaign execution

By supporting and empowering underrepresented publishers, media owners, and content creators from different cultures and backgrounds of all sizes, we provide scaled opportunities for DE&I marketers. Magnite combines its access to DE&I publishers with simplified workflows and operational capabilities to deliver data-driven DE&I campaigns across formats. We will continue to invest in our programmatic offerings to efficiently and effectively connect independent, diverse publishers with brand marketers seeking to spend their DE&I budgets at scale in brand-safe and relevant environments.

Find out more about our DE&I offering for markets here, or get in touch with your account rep at usdf@magnite.com.