Ziff Davis Announces Content Partnership and Ownership Stake in Group Black

The Black media collective and accelerator Group Black announced a new partnership at its Upfront event Wednesday evening, a collaboration with the media company Ziff Davis called Group Black Amplify that will pair the diverse voices of Group Black publishers with the distribution power of the Ziff Davis portfolio. The partnership will see Ziff Davis invest $15 million in Group Black, according to sources familiar with the matter, a move designed to best align the incentives of both parties, said Group Black co-founder Travis Montaque. The agreement will bring content created from publishers in the Group Black collective to eight Ziff Davis websites, including Mashable, PCMag and Everyday Health, according to Ziff Davis chief executive Vivek Shah. As part of the arrangement, Ziff Davis will finance the creation of this content by sharing the advertising revenue it generates, though both parties declined to offer specifics about the split. “Group Black Amplify, first and foremost, puts diverse voices in the general market and allows for a different kind of storytelling,” Montaque told Adweek. “Second, Amplify creates outsized opportunities for Black-owned media businesses to earn by giving them access to extended opportunity and distributing their content.” Through Group Black, P&G Pledges Nine-Figure Advertising Buy in Black-Owned Media The partnership is the latest in a flurry of activity from Group Black, which has signed blockbuster deals with media buyers, ad networks and brands in its first year of operations. In addition to bolstering its roster of Black voices, Group Black Amplify will increase the audience reach and ramp up the content production of Ziff Davis. Group Black Amplify brings the Ziff Davis scale To bring marketing investment to Black media, Group Black first secured spending commitments from partners like GroupM and P&G that helped guarantee its access to buyer demand. With Group Black Amplify, the media collective now gains a source of scaled distribution in Ziff Davis, whose inventory will help Group Black deploy those advertising investments. Through the partnership program, the Group Black publishers whose content serves as the vehicle for those impressions will gain exposure to the audience of Ziff Davis. Visually, the articles shared as part of this syndication effort will resemble standard Ziff Davis content, though they will feature links back to their websites, Shah explained. The arrangement will also ensure that a portion of the advertising revenue the content generates will make its way back into the bank accounts of the fledgling publishers, making good on the Group Black goal to incubate Black-owned media companies. The growth of Group Black Group Black has inked partnership deals in the past, but Group Black Amplify marks the first external investment in the company, as well as the introduction of the first non-Black shareholder in the business. The expansion of the company aims to establish a framework for allies of the Black community to partner with Group Black, Montaque said. Prior to signing the deal, Group Black ran due diligence on Ziff Davis to ensure that it had robust internal diversity initiatives of its own. Among other measures, the media company partnered with the NAACP to donate $6 million of advertising to promote organizations that support the Black community, and it launched the Black Game Developer Fund in 2020 to increase investment in Black creators in the gaming industry. These efforts helped convince Group Black that Ziff Davis aligned not only with its strategic goals, but also its core mission, Shah said. “Group Black sees a real gap in the marketplace, and they've got a solution for that gap,” Shah said. “That has a lot of people excited, which is why we're doing what we're doing and why you're seeing all these partnerships.” Correction: The article incorrectly stated that the Ziff Davis investment was the first external investment Group Black has received. Group Black has previously received external investment.