When it comes to ROI, few parts of the marketing process come under as much scrutiny as the media budgets we spend to grow our brands. Brands invest billions to get their adverts in front of consumers and even incremental improvements multiply up to big impacts.

It’s time we saw those budgets not just as an investment in our brands, but also in the media platforms, publishers & technology we choose to use. Investing our media responsibly can not only pay back a return on inclusion today, with quality content & diverse voices, but also in the very existence of a positive media environment in the future.

The move to digital has created incentives which are often detrimental to a positive media ecosystem. In desperate need of money to fund their content publishers have increased the adload on their websites to often intolerable levels; ‘made for advertising’ websites have popped up to game viewability metrics; and many news titles have become financially unviable as well-meaning brand safety efforts lock them out of revenue. Worse yet some publishers have seen the lucrative value of clickbait culture war headlines and used this as a motivation to stir up misinformation & hatred, often against minority communities.

I worked at Diageo almost 10 years ago when they pivoted from a broader open internet approach to one which prioritised a trusted marketplace of vetted & preferred partners. There were impacts on media costs and reach, but the only impacts we saw on our actual business & brand results were positive ones. They’ve spoken more recently about the direct value they’ve seen from investing in diverse media titles, and the partnership journey they’ve been on to get to that place.

Return on Inclusion in media starts of course with protecting consumers from the worst cases of hate speech through brand safety settings & tools - but setting these up in a way that doesn’t accidentally defund and silence positive discussions in the communities you are trying to connect.

Truly benefitting from inclusion then comes from a combination of media channels which over-index in and positively represent minorities and those which are actively owned and employing them. Companies are expanding their supplier diversity programs to also include media, often accelerated by direct partnerships with diverse publications who in turn can help you better understand their audiences. There’s also real value in deliberately funding content which positively represents diverse voices in more broadly mass media spaces.

It isn’t impossible to reach any audience through mass channels like TV, out-of-home and Facebook, but when you choose to invest in more personally relevant spaces you’ll get a far greater slice of people’s attention and interest. You’ll also naturally find that a truly conscious approach to where your media is flowing puts you at an advantage over those willing to chase the cheapest impression wherever it happens to be. Doing so just happens to mean you’re also investing in a better internet for us all.

To learn more about Return on Inclusion, sign up to receive our free RISE Trend Report here.