Underrepresented Voices: Advancing Equality One Impression at a Time

In the aftermath of the George Floyd tragedy, TripleLift, like all companies, knew it had to do better. As part of a broad DE&I strategy, TripleLift in 2021 launched Our Underrepresented Voices Exchange Traded Deals (UNREP) with the goal of generating economic wealth and investing in underrepresented communities. WPP’s GroupM became a founding partner to advance equality by packaging digital ad impressions on Black, LGBTQ, Latinx, AAPI, and Women-Owned Publishers. GroupM’s support is emblematic of the great appetite from buyers, who are increasingly searching for ways to make a legitimate positive impact on underrepresented communities. GroupM had previously announced its Responsible Investment Framework, inviting clients to invest 2+% or more of total media spend in Black-owned media. TripleLift also put its money where its mouth is by making these deals available at cost in Q2 last year. Waiving its fees maximized the media dollars going to underrepresented publishers.

In the last year, UNREP has become a linchpin of TripleLift’s DE&I efforts. Demand from the top 10 demand-side platforms has been strong with 561 brands supporting 6,100+ publishers with nearly 540 million impressions from the likes of Black Enterprise, El Mundo, Essence, herway, La Nacio, Marca.com and BoxRec. “As a black woman business owner, I have first-hand experience as to why initiatives such as this one are so important,” said Mediavine publisher Tanya Harris, owner of My Forking Life, a food blog with quick recipes for busy people. “I started my blog five years ago and I noticed a lack of diversity in the blogging industry. That’s starting to change, but much more could be done to level the playing field. Underrepresented Voices is a huge step in the right direction and I’m thankful that TripleLift and GroupM started this initiative.”