Minority-Owned Media Gets A Boost With Nielsen’s New Study

By Isaac Mizrahi – Co-President of ALMA Agency

The movement for racial justice over the last two years empowered diverse communities to raise their voices and call for action and advocacy from brands and businesses. The marketing and advertising industry met the call to action by committing to increase investment in diverse-owned media. As agencies and brands readied to invest, they found some bumps in the road.

Which media companies are diverse-owned beyond the major players? How do we evaluate the power of diverse-owned media in delivering audiences? What about diverse targeted and diverse operated media companies?

With record amounts of dollars set to be spent at this year’s media upfronts, one of the largest media research companies, Nielsen, sought to answer these questions and more in a new report called “Diverse-owned Media – Audience Reach and Profiles.” In the study, Nielsen aims to clarify the issues and provide a view into the reach and impact of diverse-owned media — to support an increase in investment in these media suppliers in the coming media upfronts.

I spoke with Stacie de Armas, SVP, Diverse Insights and Initiatives at Nielsen, and below is an edited version of our discussion:

Stacie de Armas- The social justice movement inspired us to expect more from brands and businesses to support social causes, including investing in and supporting diverse-owned media. Brands and agencies made commitments to increase investment in diverse-owned media, and Nielsen is answering the call to facilitate those investments.

Our diverse-owned media program aims to help grow diverse-owned media by breaking barriers to measurement, offering tangible support, and proactively surfacing performance data and complementary metrics in the Diverse Owned Media report. We recognized how important it is that we deliver these tools to the marketplace to facilitate the planning process for the upcoming upfronts and help diverse-media owners maximize the record investments in the market.

Our report provides an aggregated view of the value of investing in diverse-owned local TV and radio. We hope to resource planners, buyers, and diverse media owners to use these metrics to validate investments. In the report, we’ve chosen to focus on Black-owned media as part of our celebration of Black History Month. With the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, many marketers have also made specific commitments to increase their investments in Black-owned media. As we continue to grow our program, we will include more diverse media suppliers and plan to release another updated report in the latter part of the year.

Mizrahi – What’s the most significant learning our industry will get from the report?

de Armas- The performance metrics of diverse-owned media underscore their power in the marketplace to deliver all audiences and targeted audiences too. Our report offers both quantitative and qualitative ways to evaluate the audiences reached by diverse-owned media as well as targeted and total audience metrics. For example, Black-owned television stations reach as much as 41% of all adults in markets where they are present, and Black-owned radio has a reach among Black listeners that’s six times higher than their total market reach during key weekday drive times.

We hope that this guide will help advertisers/agencies see the need to include diverse media suppliers in their future ad buying plans and will resource suppliers to validate the impact of their entities.

Mizrahi – What are the differences between the state of Diverse Owned media across the three most significant multicultural segments, Hispanic, Black, and AAPI?

de Armas – The composition of diverse ownership varies across the spectrum. For example, there are around 800 local ad-supported diverse-owned suppliers in the radio ecosystem with Black, Asian American, Hispanic, and Native American ownership (Media Framework MAVEN). Local TV ownership varies but has representation from Black, Asian American, Hispanic, and Native American ownership. The significant opportunity is to support more ownership in the national TV space. Broadcast and cable television viewing make up over 60% of total viewing, but only a fraction of networks are certified as diverse-owned. There is very little ownership that is Asian, Hispanic, and Native American.

To support the suppliers at the local level, this report focuses on local, full power, ad-supported, TV, and local ad-supported radio with a snapshot of Black-owned National TV. We worked with expert partners like Media Framework’s MAVEN and ANA’s Alliance for Inclusive Multicultural Marketing (AIMM) to identify commercial, ad-supported media suppliers with minority owner certifications.

There are unique ownership trends across communities where broadcasters have found opportunities to serve both broad and targeted audiences. For example, our analysis in this report focuses on Asian American-owned, full-power local TV. But we know that Asian American-owned local television has a unique profile, with greater ownership in low power TV, offering tailored opportunities to engage Asian Americans in both rural and larger markets.

Mizrahi – The report brings a vital distinction between Diverse Owned media and Diverse Targeted media. Could you tell us more about this and why this is relevant?

de Armas – Diverse-owned does not necessarily imply diverse-targeted. As an example, several Spanish-language local affiliates have Asian American ownership. In some cases, diverse-owned media delivers strong targeted audiences, and in other cases, they deliver beyond their identity group. Still, there are non-diverse owned stations and networks that deliver targeted audiences.

The truth is that the industry’s long-term spend commitments can transform business for diverse owners. Investment can directly support local communities and bring authentic brand partnerships to their audiences. But this will only happen if the suppliers are on the receiving end of the investments. We want to encourage and facilitate that.

That’s why our program includes a diverse-owned media certification reimbursement fund. In collaboration with P&G, we are seeding a $130,000 reimbursement program with the National Minority Supplier Development Council (NMSDC) to help cover the certification fees for diverse-owned media suppliers who qualify. This fund aims to support the certification process, expanding the pipeline of diverse-owned media officially defined as a Minority Business Enterprise (MBE). The more diverse media owners that are designated as an MBE, the more opportunity for ad spend to flow to them.

Mizrahi – What are the challenges Nielsen faces when measuring audience, media reach, and frequency of Diverse Owned Media?

de Armas – Measurement is only one aspect of our diverse-owned media equity program. We aimed to support these entities all-around. Some stations are on the path to publicly-shared measurement, but they may not be ready yet to surface and share that data today. Our goal is to help grow diverse-owned media suppliers and ensure they are best positioned when ready to surface their data. As an example, we revised policies allowing us to proactively monitor entities at our expense, ensuring we have a complete landscape of data for all diverse owners in the National TV space.

As we started our work to remove barriers to measurement and revise legacy policies for diverse owners, we recognized the need for clarity around who qualifies as diverse owners. Some have national-level certifications like NMSDC, and others have certifications from local municipalities, the Small Business Administration, or the Federal Communications Commission. The landscape is complex, and our collaboration with Media Framework and ANA AIMM was instrumental in understanding the complexities. We worked with them to identify with discipline the suppliers in the media ecosystem we aimed to support and will continue to collaborate with them to surface more diverse-owned media.

Mizrahi – What else is Nielsen planning regarding its support of Diverse-Owned media?

de Armas – Nielsen’s first step is to turn on monitoring for diverse-owned stations allowing us to provide the aggregate performance metrics that can be used by buyers, whether those stations’ data surface in systems or not, and by sellers to validate their performance. This report focuses on National TV, Local Radio, and full-power TV —not a landscape report of all diverse-owned media. It is purposely designed to create equity for smaller owners to ensure they are not excluded from media buys. A future report will cover streaming, satellite, digital, and syndicators.

This effort to include more suppliers will take time. For example, starting in June, the annual revenue threshold for reporting minority-owned radio stations regardless of subscription status will increase from $7 million to $10 million in annual revenue for the sum of the stations in the group. This increase is expected to allow more individual stations to qualify for reporting making their data visible to planners and buyers. We will also host workshops for diverse owners who want to learn more about the benefits of certification and offer pro bono consulting opportunities via our Next Level Suppliers program to diverse-owned media who qualify to help increase their visibility, educate them about the options for measurement, and work directly with them to enhance their sales materials.

It is fundamental that our industry keeps investing in studies like Nielsen’s. It is also essential that the discussion about minority-owned media also incorporates the perspective of diverse targeted and diverse managed companies to create a fair assessment of our marketing and advertising ecosystem.