Achieving Inclusive Investment with Kargo

November 19th, 2024

As seen on Cynopsis

How Kargo and Digitas Help Diverse Influencers and Content Creators Reach Broader Audiences

In recent years, there has been a concerted effort by Marketers to include diverse-owned publishers as part of their media buys after having been previously overlooked from lack of scale.

From 2020 to 2023, ad spend committed to diverse-owned media grew exponentially, increasing from $400 million to $1.9 billion, according to ANA’s Alliance for Inclusive and Multicultural Marketing.

A rise in demand to advertise with diverse publishers has created a need for infrastructure to accommodate an increase in supply, which leading ad tech company Kargo was more than happy to provide.

“Marketers are very much interested in partnering with diverse media, but unfortunately, the demand exceeded the supply,” said Jeannine Shao Collins, Chief Client Officer at Kargo.

Last year, Kargo launched the Multicultural Content Amplifier (MCA) to solve this very problem. The MCA was designed to meet growing marketer demand to advertise on diverse publishers’ sites and to distinct communities. It also helps smaller publishers increase their supply and connect to more advertisers, bringing in more revenue and giving them new tools to grow their business and better operationalize their ad platforms. And it provides training on digital marketing areas like search engine optimization and social engagement.

“When we talk about inclusive investment and economic empowerment, we partner with companies like Kargo because they can help clients reach different audiences and achieve scale for diverse creators,” said Danisha Lomax, EVP, Head of Client Inclusivity & Impact at Digitas.

“Inclusive investment is not a separate product or solution,” Lomax continued. “It’s actually infused in everything we do, and Kargo helps us design a systematized approach to driving growth and inclusive impact.”

Kargo is now looking to expand its diverse-media initiative to ensure multicultural social media influencers and content creators receive monetization with the introduction of its new Palette product, an offering aimed at giving diverse video creators scale to increase visibility across the web.

“Diverse creators have a tough time getting exposure beyond certain communities,” said Shao Collins. “Our goal is to really amplify and give diverse communities exposure on the open web to people who may not normally see their content, and the way we can support diverse creators and their content is through our technology and through our platform.”

Evolution of the Multicultural Content Amplifier

Palette, which will launch in early 2025, is more than just a new distribution tool; it is helping push the MCA into new ad formats.

For Kargo, the Palette program is as much about growing diverse audiences as it is about strengthening a more inclusive digital ecosystem. Palette leverages Fabrik, Kargo’s content management system that launched in 2021 in response to increased need for video.

“Understanding that so much of the content today is about sight and sound, we think this is really important to enable those content types for diverse creators and audiences,” said Shao Collins.

Palette, which is designed to meet the needs of campaigns focused on multicultural objectives, will be available to all Kargo clients; however, for campaigns with smaller budgets, Kargo will offer its new Cultural Collective plan, which encourages brands to invest in diverse-owned media by offering audience targeting, content amplification and high-indexing sites.