17536: OOH WPP VML ODN WTF.

The social media post depicted above from Outdoor Nation unintentionally underscores how Adland is a messy cesspool.

 

First, WPP Creative White advertising agency VML hatched the Wendy’s creative campaign to run in Indianapolis. Um, localized messaging is hardly groundbreaking—and this concept doesn’t even qualify as mediocre.

 

Next, Outdoor Nation boasting about its strategic media plan is pathetic too. Surely the strategizing, planning, and execution could have been handled via AI or any entry-level media wonk who wasn’t replaced by AI.

 

Additionally, WPP has been positioning itself as a single White operating company, offering simplicity, efficacy, and efficiency to clients. Yet Outdoor Nation is an independent vendor. So, why did VML partner with the Tennessee-based firm versus tapping WPP Media—given the global unit supposedly won the Wendy’s media account earlier this year?

 

Finally, the social media post and associated PR make no mention of Black-owned media involvement, which is outrageous given Blacks represent nearly 28% of Indianapolis’ population.

 

In summation, the OOH from VML, WPP, and ODN warrants WTF. 

17097: Mickey D’s & Byron Allen Reach A McSettlement.

 

Advertising Age republished Crain’s Chicago Business content reporting Mickey D’s and Byron Allen settled the media mogul’s $10 billion discrimination lawsuit.

 

Reaching a confidential agreement means the public will never learn the amount collected by Allen. The deal includes a McPromise to continue buying advertising from Allen’s Entertainment Studios Network.

 

Expect to see McWeather Reports delivered by Ronald McDonald and Grimace.

 

For now, hopefully, Allen feels Black & Positively Golden^®.

 

McDonald’s settles Byron Allen’s $10B ad discrimination lawsuit

 

McDonald’s has settled a $10 billion lawsuit filed by Byron Allen, apparently ending a years-long legal drama between the fast food giant and media mogul over alleged discrimination in advertising practices.

 

In a June 13 press release, McDonald’s announced it reached a confidential agreement in which it will continue to purchase advertising from Allen’s Entertainment Studios Network priced at market value in exchange for the network’s dismissal of the suit.

 

Allen, who owns properties such as The Weather Channel and Justice Central, filed a lawsuit against McDonald’s in 2021, alleging the Chicago-based chain discriminated against his company through racial stereotyping and refusals to contract. Two years later, Allen escalated by buying a full-page ad in the Chicago Tribune soliciting activist investor Carl Icahn to join the legal fight and suing again, alleging McDonald’s was not on track to meet a 2021 commitment to spend more of its advertising budget with Black-owned media companies. That complaint was dismissed in 2024.

 

The original suit filed in 2021 was slated to go to trial next month.

 

“We are pleased that Mr. Allen has come to appreciate McDonald’s unwavering commitment to inclusion, and has agreed to refocus his energies on a mutually beneficial commercial arrangement that is consistent with other McDonald’s supplier relationships,” McDonald’s said in the release.

 

“During the course of this litigation, many of our preconceptions have been clarified, and we acknowledge McDonald’s commitment to investing in Black-owned media properties and increasing access to opportunity,” Entertainment Studios Network said in the McDonald’s release. “Our differences are behind us, and we look forward to working together.”

 

—Crain’s Chicago Business

16477: Let Them Eat Crumbs.

 

Advertising Age published a report titled, “US Multicultural Media Spending Expected To Surge In 2024—But Still Lag Behind Total Spending.”

 

Market research firm PQ Media predicts political and sports advertising targeting Latinos will account for the multicultural marketing spike.

 

No need to bother reading the details, as the story is a familiar scheme.

 

In short, multicultural media can expect extra crumbs, although nothing like the cash collected by White media. The perceived “surge” is no cause for celebration, as more crumbs is still crumbs—or systemic racism.

 

Appropriately enough, Ad Age illustrated the content with a royalty-free stock image (depicted above) featuring a presumably Latinx family eating—and enjoying crumbs.

 

Bon appétit.

16437: Black-Owned Publishers Color Commentary Of The Week.

Digiday posted a report titled, “Black-owned publishers say they still suffer from discriminatory keyword blocklists, miscategorized content.”

 

Critical commentary on this topic seems to appear nearly weekly. Hell, the systemic racism being hurled at Black-owned publishers generates more content than the annual output of the average Black-owned publisher.

 

Digiday didn’t even bother to illustrate the report with an original image, recycling art from a previous entry (depicted above). And the rendering shows Blacks under the rule of a White CEO. Brilliant.

16412: Crumby Confession.

The latest Digiday confessions series installment presented a Black-owned publisher who professed that business is suffering as interest in supporting minority-owned media continues to decline—and promises to support minority-owned media continue to be forgotten and/or broken. Not sure why this warranted a “confession”—after all, many others have gone public to expose the abandonment of Black-owned media, Black influencers, and Black advertising agencies. Hey, Whites prefer to offer crumbs versus commitment.

 

Confessions of a Black-owned publisher who is concerned about being labeled an MFA over traffic goals

 

By Sara Guaglione

 

In the crackdown on made-for-advertising sites (MFAs), smaller, independently-owned publishers, including Black-owned media companies, are feeling the effects.

 

Last year, a number of Black-owned publishers said agencies’ commitments to spend a percentage of their media dollars with them after the murder of George Floyd and subsequent protests in 2020 had, in fact, led to increases in ad revenue and new advertisers. But this year, declining referral traffic from Facebook has led to one Black-owned publisher struggling to fulfill the ad impressions required. They feel pushed to buy traffic on Facebook to satisfy the campaign demands and keep the ad revenue, but are concerned about the risk of being labeled an MFA as a result, according to that publisher’s head of digital.

 

In this edition of our Confessions series, in which we exchange anonymity for candor, a Black-owned publisher’s head of digital explained the conundrum of benefitting from agencies’ budgets going to companies like theirs while needing to find ways to fulfill those deals without being labeled an MFA, at a time when referral traffic is on the decline.

 

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed.

 

When did you start to notice a significant dip in traffic coming to your site?

 

It was probably sometime [around] August of last year. [We were] part of the whole Facebook News deal. They were paying us a nominal fee. It was like $100,000 a year for three years. But… they were surfacing our content in the Facebook News tab. So we were getting a two-for-one. We were getting the organic stuff that we’ve pushed out… to [Facebook]. And then we were getting the Facebook News tab [traffic]. And then around probably August of 2022 [we heard they were] getting rid of the Facebook News tab deal. I’m fine with that; we didn’t need $100,000 a year.

 

But the traffic that came from it was like 3 to 4 million unique visitors on top of the 3 to 4 million unique visitors we were doing through organic posting. And that went away. And it hurt. [Traffic] has been slowly going down [since then], maybe because of the bug… For a small niche publisher [like us] it hurts us. We used to be at 13 million unique visitors. Last month in Comscore we were [around] 2 million. That’s not just all Facebook, but a big chunk of that — like 6 or 7 million — was Facebook just deciding, “We don’t want to help you promote your content.”

 

How has the decline in traffic taken a toll on the business?

 

Where it really hurts is in Comscore. Agencies still use it. We were getting so many RFPs falling from the sky, just based on our reach [as a top Black-owned media publication]… So we kind of lose the easy dollars right there. But in addition to that, now you have to deliver on all the campaigns we have. We’re still benefiting from the George Floyd bump when agencies like GroupM and Publicis decided they were going to do X amount of spend. We get a lot of direct deals. Now we have to fulfill those deals. Now we don’t necessarily have the traffic all the time to fill them. We’re sold out more often. So now we have to do audience extension or buy traffic to the site. And it’s just a balance.

 

You buy traffic to the site then you have Chris Kane [founder of programmatic supply chain management company Jounce] saying you’re an MFA. And if you don’t do it, you’re buying outside the site [by running impressions through another publisher] and the advertisers are like, “Why are you using other publishers to fulfill your deals?” So it is a balancing act there, which is the biggest struggle for the business. We’re losing money, because we have to actually spend money to extend that audience.

 

Are you having to pivot to make up for the loss in traffic and the business challenges as a result of that decline?

 

One of the biggest issues that I have right now [with traffic] and have to decide what to do is the NewsBreak app. It was giving us 3 to 4 million uniques per month and they recently decided to go to a walled garden model similar to SmartNews. The way to push us into the walled garden is to turn down the reach of our current basic RSS feed that goes in there. So now we’ve gone from [getting] 4 million [uniques] down to [around] 1.5 million uniques from them. What I’m basically up against is, do I do this walled garden deal, which essentially might give us a larger traffic number and larger Comscore number? But then it takes away any place we can run our own ads.

 

Facebook, SmartNews, NewsBreak, Flipboard [aren’t] really doing much [for us]. Essentially, you’re [relying] on Google and you’re hoping for people coming right to your site. [I want to do] an ad deal [with NewsBreak] where I can insert [our] ads into their walled garden, and thus giving them a little bit of margin but at least being able to fulfill the direct deals we have. If you’re a niche publisher, it’s pretty difficult. I’m at a loss for words on what to do… It’s not like I’m not doing my job. It’s just the industry is changing right now.

 

That sounds really tough. If inventory is often sold out and the money is still coming in but the impressions aren’t there anymore, what can a publisher like yours do right now?

 

It’s kind of pushing you to buy [traffic]. And I’m not saying we can’t buy. But then when you’re buying, you have some type of arbitrage, right? It’s not like — I can buy [cost-per-click ads on Facebook], that gives me a high [cost per 1,000 impressions], then my [revenue earned per 1,000 page views] is low. So you put a templated page in there [with a lot of ad units] to maximize RPM. But it’s nonstop — every week there’s like three or four articles about MFAs and we kind of got hit once by Jounce saying, “You’re an MFA because you’re [buying] all this traffic.” Well, what do you want me to do? I need to fulfill these deals, so I’m going to have to buy traffic. I’m not trying to put together a MFA site, but I’m trying to do something to allow us to get the money from agencies and deliver on the campaigns. It’s just a balancing act, and it’s very tough these days.

10668: Broken Promises, Fortified Prejudice.

 

Digiday Podcast spoke with Revolt CEO Detavio Samuels, who said advertisers have failed to deliver on promises to support Black-owned media. This is not news for anyone, especially vocal and litigious critics like Byron Allen. When it comes to all things related to equality and fairness in Adland, promises, pledges, and commitments translate to performative lies—which perpetuates systemic racism, the only thing that the ruling majority is truly dedicated to delivering. Besides crumbs.

 

Revolt’s Detavio Samuels says advertisers have fallen short on commitments to Black-owned media companies

 

By Tim Peterson

 

Nearly three years after advertisers and agencies pledged to diversify their spending to support Black-owned media companies, there remains a shortfall in the amount of money actually making it to Black-owned media businesses.

 

“We’ve definitely seen movement and momentum. But without question, I think that they have fallen very short from the promises that they’ve made. And even this year, with all the talk about the recession and with all of the cuts, I think even their desire to deliver on those commitments are even smaller,” said Detavio Samuels, CEO of Revolt on the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast.

 

As a Black-owned media company that was founded by Sean Combs and operates a TV network as well as streaming and digital properties, Revolt has worked to address one of advertisers’ top complaints: “That there was not enough inventory in Black-owned media in order to deliver against the commitments,” Samuels said. Among those efforts have been Revolt’s launches of free, ad-supported streaming TV channels across services including most recently Vizio’s WatchFree+.

 

“There are thousands of FAST channels that exist today. But when you look at those FAST channels, most of the platforms that have FAST channels have somewhere between zero to maybe two Black content-focused channels. And so we see that as a massive opportunity,” Samuels said.

 

Despite advertisers’ DE&I shortcomings and the overall shrinking of the traditional TV business, Revolt’s revenues have continued to grow, and its digital revenue has surpassed its linear TV revenue despite the latter revenue stream continuing to grow.

 

“Now our digital revenue is much larger than our linear revenue. Over the last few years, we’ve seen our digital revenue growth about 9x to 10x, whereas our linear revenue has probably grown closer to 4x to 5x. And so streaming and digital is without question the biggest portion of our business right now,” Samuels said.

 

Here are a few highlights from the conversation, which have been edited for length and clarity.

 

Digital revenue dominance

 

Streaming and digital is without question the biggest portion of our business right now. When you look at [Revolt’s overall revenue] last year, let’s call it five-eighths digital and three-eighths linear.

 

Streaming subscription saturation

 

We see subscription as an opportunity. But as you know, the subscription market is just highly saturated. And for those people who know the difference between a red ocean and a blue ocean, I very much see the subscription business as a red ocean where you have several massive players competing. It’s no longer about growing the market; it’s about stealing share.

 

Keeping score of advertisers’ commitments

 

What most advertisers haven’t done is come up with a scorecard. There’s no transparency. And so we are working with third parties to come up with some sort of scorecard that can showcase whether brands have been increasing their spend with Black-owned media over the last few years or not.

 

DE&I dollars in an economic downturn

 

My business training always taught me that, when you need to make cuts, you go for the biggest piece of the pie. And so I don’t understand how advertisers and brands — even if they are having to do cuts — still can’t get to 2-3-4-5-6-7-8% [of their budgets being spent] on Black-owned media. And so that is absolutely a concern. And so we’re going to keep the pressure on advertisers and brands to make sure they deliver against the commitments that they made.