When Group Black leaders traveled to Cannes Lions in June to throw an exclusive after-hours nightclub party and rub shoulders with big-spending marketers, one man was conspicuously absent.
It was Travis Montaque, Group Black's 32-year-old chief executive. Weeks before the tentpole annual event, leaders announced at an impromptu all-hands meeting that Montaque would go on leave.
The shocking news sent rumors flying about why the charismatic face of the company was suddenly stepping back, just before the industry's highest-stakes event of the year. Speculation swirled about what it could mean for Group Black's future.
For Group Black insiders, it was just the latest sign that something at the company was awry.
Montaque cofounded Group Black in 2021 with the goal of directing $500 million in advertising money to Black-owned media in its first 18 months. One of its founders predicted it would one day become "a top five media player." Group Black employees saw it as a chance to finally correct the funding disparity affecting minority-owned media.
"I think most folks were optimistic, passionate, about the business," a departed executive said. "We were going to change the face of media."
But three years later, a fraction of the money advertisers pledged has materialized, and Group Black has directed an even smaller portion of that to the publishers it promised to help, insiders told Business Insider. In recent months, a long line of executives has left. Former staff and people close to the company blame its struggles on advertisers' broken pledges, internal disorganization, and execution stumbles. BI spoke with 23 former employees, publishers, and business partners. Most spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak about Group Black or feared retaliation for speaking out.
"They presented the idea that they'd do many big deals," one publisher said. "None of that happened."
Now insiders are wondering what's behind the CEO's sudden step back and what the company's future holds.
Group Black, through a representative, declined to comment on this story. In a LinkedIn post published Monday ahead of this article's publication, Bonin Bough, a cofounder of the company, acknowledged there had been challenges. He also said Group Black didn't measure success by how much money was spent but how much value and growth it brought to diverse-owned media, adding that in some cases, it steered meaningful amounts of money to some creators.
Group Black made a big splash at the start
Mid-2020 marked a turning point in the US. Black Lives Matter protests were peaking after the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other Black Americans. Blue-chip corporations quickly joined in on the national reckoning.
Big advertisers such as Coca-Cola and Walmart publicly pledged to boost their spending with Black-owned media, which, at that point, accounted for less than 1% of overall ad spending.
Group Black entered the market following this cultural moment, launching in 2021 with a $75 million target media investment from GroupM, the world's biggest buying agency.
With the pledge, Group Black laid out a plan to steer money to Black media owners and acquire media companies.
Montaque and his cofounders, Bough and Richelieu Dennis, talked about helping network-member companies develop adtech infrastructure to make it easier to access bigger advertisers. Bough, Group Black's chief strategy officer, was a former Mondelēz and PepsiCo marketer who presented the CNBC reality show "Cleveland Hustles." Dennis founded the SheaMoisture and Sundial body-care companies.
Group Black was also backed by a board of corporate-America elites including Ursula Burns, a former CEO of Xerox and the first Black female Fortune 500 CEO, and Seth Kaufman, a former CEO of Moët Hennessy North America.
Target and Procter & Gamble pledged to work with the company in its first nine months. In April 2022, the publishing company Ziff Davis invested $15 million. At its peak, Group Black employed about 60 people.
Early employees described feeling deeply engaged and passionate about the company's mission. They enjoyed some of the perks, too, like plush all-company offsites at the luxury Soho Grand Hotel in Manhattan in 2022 and the upscale Loews beach hotel in Santa Monica in 2023.
"I loved the offsites because it was my first time working for a Black-owned company," a former Group Black staffer said. "I wasn't a minority — it was special not having to code-switch."
Despite early momentum, however, sources said some companies had spent only a fraction of the money they publicly said they targeted to spend through Group Black.
The money didn't materialize as hoped
While Group Black was quick to secure what were described as commitments from the likes of GroupM and Procter & Gamble — two of the biggest spenders in the global media industry — the ad dollars were slow to roll in, 10 former employees said.
Spokespeople for GroupM and P&G said that they couldn't comment on the amounts they had invested because that information is proprietary, but both companies confirmed they remained Group Black partners.
Three advertisers told BI that Group Black didn't have the reach — with only a few publishers in its network to start — or low-enough prices to meet advertising goals. Beyond that, some ad buyers said it wasn't clear how Group Black was adding value that couldn't be better achieved by buying directly from the publishers.
Plus, like many startups, Group Black was initially lean and lacked a consistent sales and account-management infrastructure, two media buyers said. That made it difficult to deploy sizable ad budgets with the network early on, they said.
Four former Group Black employees defended the company, saying agencies should have adjusted their expectations.
"If you're going to play the same game, you're not changing a damn thing," one former Group Black employee said, referring to some advertisers' refusal to budge on the rate cards and measurement benchmarks they used in other forms of media.
While the company was struggling to secure advertising dollars, some publishers began questioning the value of their partnerships with Group Black.
Group Black's terms have varied by publisher but often called for a 30% cut or more of campaigns it won, six people with knowledge of such deals said. Some publishers said they considered Group Black's terms punitive, with ad networks' rates typically closer to 25%, and that they weren't getting the business-building support or networking benefits they'd expected from the arrangement.
Urban Edge Network, a company that owns and operates an over-the-top TV channel and app for sports at Historically Black colleges and universities, signed with Group Black but never saw any advertising dollars, Todd Brown, its CEO, said.
"All that came was a bunch of invites to a bunch of events," he said. "Going to Cannes is not a business model. I don't know anyone in the Black space who's making money with Group Black."
Going to Cannes is not a business model.Todd Brown, Urban Edge Network CEO.
Group Black's payment timelines — which could stretch as long as six months — were a widely voiced frustration for both employees and member publishers, six insiders said. Several employees who left the company cited this issue as a key factor in their departures.
Group Black has not been immune to broader market pressures. In 2022, advertisers sharply reduced spending in media overall in response to economic uncertainty and reverted to buying with their customary media partners. Corporate America has also pulled back from diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. Ad-spending increases in diverse-owned media leveled off after a spike in 2021, according to the Association of National Advertisers's Alliance for Inclusive and Multicultural Marketing.
"It's been difficult all around at the moment as Black lives have, frankly, stopped mattering within the agency world," said Christopher Kenna, the chief executive of BA Diversity Media, a minority-owned media and tech company that isn't within Group Black's network. "I'm not surprised Group Black is having the same problems. We were milked dry and then, when the mood changed, told, 'Sorry, the clients are not interested anymore.'"
Group Black made a series of pivots
Group Black originally planned to direct $500 million in ad dollars to Black-owned businesses by the end of 2022. Three people with direct knowledge said Group Black in 2022 brought in between $12 million and $14 million in revenue — the money it generated from directing ad dollars. One said that in 2023, it generated $40 million, which this person said was about half its target.
"You can't monetize if you don't own anything," one former Group Black employee said, referring to the fact that the company had to share revenue with its member publishers.
Faced with the need for scale, Group Black has sought out partnerships that stretch beyond its original mission of steering money to Black-owned media companies. In late 2021, it added She Media, a collection of women-aimed blogs owned by Penske Media Corp., to its network. In the past year, it landed a deal with NBCUniversal to be the exclusive seller of ads in Peacock's Black-led titles and partnered with the marketing cloud Zeta Global to help advertisers reach Black and Hispanic audiences, two moves that insiders see as having traction.
Group Black also made deals to produce content with Procter & Gamble for the Fox streaming service Tubi and, separately, for Everyday Health. (Everyday Health is part of Ziff Davis, whose CEO, Vivek Shah, sits on Group Black's board.)
The acquisitions Group Black originally sought — which would enable it to fully control the advertising process and resulting revenue — have been largely unrealized. Various outlets reported that Group Black mounted bids for media companies including the Sports Illustrated publisher Arena Group, the Paramount-owned BET, Vice Media, and Vox Media. None of those deals happened.
In April, however, Group Black announced the acquisition of Galore Media, a lifestyle outlet that primarily published on social media, which is relatively small compared with the companies it was reportedly pursuing.
In his LinkedIn post on Monday, Bough wrote, "we have more momentum today than at any other time in our short history, with initiatives announced recently with major networks, brands, and talent."
Insiders say they feel demoralized
Group Black's unrealized ambitions have left some insiders feeling demoralized and disappointed.
Seven former employees described Montaque as an energetic leader but said he was ultimately ineffective in executing Group Black's mission. Some pointed to the trajectories of two of his other startups in questioning his leadership. One, Holler, a conversational media company he founded in 2011, raised more than $50 million, then pivoted to become an animation studio. He also founded Crater, a creator network, in 2022. Crater's website is no longer in operation.
Three publishers said they felt let down by Group Black but were reluctant to speak out against it publicly, fearing retaliation from its powerful founders. Four long-standing Black-media operators expressed resentment that they didn't get the same level of media coverage and financial commitments as Group Black and had to compete with it for ad buys.
At the same time, some Black-media publishers said they should be focusing on increasing their tiny share of the ad pie, rather than fighting each other.
Sheila Marmon, the founder and CEO of Mirror Digital, an ad network and publisher of content for diverse audiences, said it was "hard to see them having their name in lights" when she struggled to raise money while building her company. Marmon is certain Mirror has lost business to Group Black. At the same time, she said, "the story can't be about us fighting over crumbs."
Some company insiders and industry watchers expressed optimism that Group Black, after pivoting, could still play a key role in efforts to boost diversity in media.
"If they focus, they can survive. If marketers want to sell more products, they have to tap diverse audiences," a former Group Black exec said. "How big the business becomes, I'm not sure, but they do have some interesting pieces to work with."
While some of the excitement around Group Black has subsided, buzz is growing around Sundial Media Group, the parent company of Black- and women-focused media brands like Essence, Afropunk, and the beauty event Beautycon. Sundial added Vice Media's Refinery29 to its roster in April and is on the hunt for more publishers.
Some in the industry are wondering how Sundial's expansion could affect Group Black. Sundial's owner is the same Richelieu Dennis who's Group Black's chair and cofounder. Dennis brought on Kirk McDonald, who left GroupM in October, to run Sundial. That means two of Group Black's original champions seem to be building a competitor. In announcing the Refinery29 deal, Dennis explicitly said Sundial would benefit from ad budgets set aside for Black-owned publishers.
Some insiders wonder whether this means Dennis is throwing in the towel on Group Black, or intends to eventually roll it into Sundial. Many hope the company's original mission continues in some form.
"Every time we were all in a call or a room, there was a huge amount of excitement to try to make change happen," one former Group Black employee said of their experience at the company. "I hate seeing the way things are going and wish it could be better. I believe in the founders and what they're trying to accomplish."
Do you have a tip or information to share about this story? Contact Lucia Moses via email or (917) 209-8549 on text/Signal/WhatsApp using a non-work device or Lara O'Reilly via Telegram (@loreilly1), Signal (loreilly.71) or email.
