Inclusive Audiences: An Ongoing Conversation

This summer Alliant's President and CEO shared an open letter about diversity and inclusion in our workplace and industry. Laid out was a goal to create more inclusive marketing: “As an industry, we need to go beyond creative and boycotts, and challenge ourselves to make every component of marketing fair and inclusive. With the support of our partners, we are prepared to lead in these efforts.”

Since July, Alliant has continued to engage in meaningful conversations with our associates and partners, moving closer to a cohesive concept of inclusive marketing. We’ve also actively sought out opportunities in the broader marketplace to drive discussion about what inclusive advertising means from an audience targeting perspective. First, we addressed how brands can respond to Google’s renewed enforcement of anti-discriminatory laws, no longer allowing advertisers to target or exclude consumers from employment, housing, and credit campaigns based on restricted attributes. Matt Frattaroli, Alliant’s VP of Digital, made the case that collaboration between analytic and legal teams is a requirement for brands to not only comply, but to continue to succeed with audience optimization.

The original article, published by Advertising Week in August, stated “Advertisers and agencies can either stop making audience selections that are based on protected classes – such as building lookalikes of existing customers – or they can define the ideal audience they want to use in a campaign and remove any offending attributes from the audience models, including those that implicitly discriminate.”

Read the full article for Matt’s insight on how to build audiences that consider compliance from the start, and the benefits they provide.

The need to meet increased regulation is only one component. Many marketers are realizing that new creative and speed to market hardly matters if their message of change isn’t seen by those who really need to see it or those most likely to respond to it.

In September, JoAnne published a few ideas on how exactly marketers can expand their efforts beyond creative and build audiences to be more inclusive on Ad Exchanger’s Data-Driven Thinking. One primary suggestion is that custom modeling is the way to “encourage transparent conversations about model inputs, from initial segmentation to variable selection.” Check out the full article for all of JoAnne’s ideas, including some changes that can be implemented without much impact on resources.

Whether a brand is establishing their own diversity and inclusion goals, or responding to evolving regulations, the opportunities to refine and expand audience creation are endless. Our team is committed to help marketers navigate change with strategic planning and creative solutions for predictive and inclusive audiences, all without sacrificing quality or reach.

Looking for some ideas for your next campaign? Let the audience experts at Alliant help. And stay tuned for more projects and partnership updates on our quest for more inclusive marketing.