
On Tuesday, GroupM announced that an inaugural group of 20 clients has pledged to spend at least 2% of their total annual media budgets in Black-owned media companies through the firm’s recently launched Media Inclusion Initiative. The program is designed to help clients invest in diverse media companies and content creators with an initial focus on Black-owned media.

In the space of just a few weeks, a group of Madison Avenue heavyweights — with names like General Motors, Interpublic Group and WPP — has made public guarantees of ad money for some of the industry’s smaller media outlets, all owned by Black entrepreneurs. Getting these companies to talk about ad spending in public is an amazing feat. For Byron Allen, it’s just a first step.

The agency pledge comes as the ad world looks to diversify its media spend in this spring’s ad haggle.
Byron Allen’s Allen Media Group and Verizon are partnering in a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiative to increase media spending with U.S. Black-owned media companies with a summit set for May. “I’m very proud of Verizon, one of the largest advertisers in the world, coming to the table to make sure we have real economic inclusion for Black-owned […]

The automaker said it plans to dedicate 4% of its advertising budget to Black-owned media by 2022 and 8% by 2025.