Havas Media Group has launched a global initiative to ensure a more equitable share of investment in trusted news sources and content from minority and under-represented groups.
The ‘Meaningful Marketplaces’ ecosystem aims to provide Havas clients with a direct connection to ‘trusted, influential, and engaging’ media. It promises a more equitable share of investment and greater opportunity to invest through a reduction in sell-side fees, while ensuring brand safety and cost transparency.
“Meaningful Media has never been more important. To thrive, it needs an equitable and self-sustaining ecosystem,” said James Gyngell, Global Managing Director of Partnerships at Havas Media Group. “We developed Meaningful Marketplaces to function as that ecosystem, ensuring transparency for all stakeholders and investing for positive change. Launching first with MediaMath, Pubmatic, and Magnite, we invite all participants in the industry to join us.”
The launch of Meaningful Marketplaces follows on from Havas’ introduction of its ‘Social Equity Marketplaces’ in the US, UK, Germany, and France last year.
It also comes around half a year after it became the first global holding company to join the Conscious Advertising Network (CAN), which is a voluntary coalition of organisations that are working to make modern advertising more ethical.
The CAN is built on six best practice manifestos, which it wants to be embedded in every agency brief. These manifestos are around the areas of Anti Ad-Fraud, Informed Consent, Diversity, Fake News, Hate Speech, and Children’s Wellbeing.
Upon committing to the manifestos, Havas also introduced its own internal initiatives around the principles, which included the launch of processes to ensure diversity, equity, and inclusion across its business, and a bid to take a more inclusive approach to brand safety. Havas said that its recognition of the systemic problems that exist within advertising led to the development of Meaningful Marketplaces.