Black-owned media ad spend falls below expectations at Group Black

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After promising to spend $500 million on promoting in black-owned media, some persons are racking their brains over what went fallacious at Group Black, in a lengthy article published in Business Insider reveals.

Founded in 2021 by Travis Montaque, Bonin Bough, and Richelieu Dennis, Group Black was founded with the vision of equipping Black-owned media with $500 million in promoting in its first 18 months. Three years later, those guarantees haven’t been fulfilled, executives have left the corporate, and the longer term looks less promising.

“I think most people were optimistic, passionate about the business,” said one executive who has since left the corporate. “We were going to change the face of media.”

What’s more, ahead of the Group Black event at Cannes Lions in June, where the leaders had gone to host an exclusive nightclub event to network with marketers who can be writing the check, Montaque announced he was taking a leave of absence. Many insiders say it was just one other sign that something was fallacious at the corporate.

“They pitched the idea that they were going to do a lot of big deals,” said one publisher. “Nothing came of it.”

At the time of its inception, Group Black was formed within the wake of guarantees from major advertisers like Walmart and Coca-Cola to publicly commit to putting more ad dollars into black-owned media, which at the time was lower than 1% of total ad spend. When Group Black launched, it received a $75 million investment in targeted media from the world’s largest buying agency, GroupM.

Other major early donors to Group Black’s plan to secure more funding for black-owned media include Proctor & Gamble (P&G), which, together with GroupM, told Business Insider it couldn’t comment on the amounts invested because the data is proprietary. Spokespeople for the businesses confirmed they’re still partners with Group Black.

On the contrary, Todd Brown, CEO of Urban Edge Network, stated that despite signing a cope with Group Black, the corporate never received the promoting dollars it was originally promised.

“All that came in was a bunch of invites to a bunch of events,” said Brown, whose company owns and operates a TV channel focused on HBCU sports. “Going to Cannes is not a business model. I don’t know of anyone in the black space who’s making money off of Group Black.”

Despite initially promising To help attract dollars to Black-owned media corporations, Group Black has expanded its reach to other media corporations, similar to She Media, NBCUniversal, and Zeta Global, as a part of its scaling efforts. In April, the corporate announced the acquisition of lifestyle network Galore Media, which focuses totally on social media publishing.

“Today we have more momentum than at any point in our short history, with recent announcements featuring some of the biggest networks, brands, and talent out there,” Bough wrote in a post shared on LinkedIn before news of the corporate’s shortcomings broke.

Beyond Group Black, there was a general shift in spending on Black-owned media that was promised after the murder of George Floyd. Advertisers saw a major drop in media spending in 2022 as they braced for the approaching economic uncertainty and commenced buying from their regular media partners again.

American corporations have also scaled back their diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, and even suspended them altogether.

“It’s tough right now because black lives, quite frankly, have stopped mattering in the agency world,” said Christopher Kenna, CEO of BA Diversity Media, a minority-owned media and technology company that shouldn’t be a part of the Group Black network. “I’m not surprised Group Black is having the same problems. We were milked dry and then, when the mood changed, they said, ‘Sorry, clients are no longer interested.’”