Mediavine boosts programmatic ad spend on minority-owned inventory

Ad management platform Mediavine has announced a “significant uptick” in programmatic ad sales for minority-owned inventory drawn from its network of some 8,300 independent publishers. The increase was seen following the onboarding of Colossus SSP in July.

Colossus is a custom supply side platform geared to delivering a highly diverse marketplace to advertisers. It focuses on connecting brand marketers with culturally specific audiences served by niche publishers (including Black, Hispanic, Asian, LGBTQ, and others). It also supports advertising to general audiences. The SSP is itself minority-owned.

Since being onboarded, Colossus has become one of Mediavine’s top ten monetization partners.

Why we care. “Marketing teams got away with this for a long time,” marketing consultant Tim Parkin told us. He was referring to the delivery of messages to mass, undifferentiated audiences. If they’re not just to be annoying background noise, ads need to deliver relevant messages to specific audiences — where those audiences are. Sometimes, that will mean engaging with minority audiences; and here’s an SSP designed to enable that.

This looks like an all-round winning strategy. Brands get to buy inventory from publishers with specific, niche audiences — in this case, minority audiences — and minority-owned publishers get rewarded too.