dentsu has updated payment terms to 30-days for all minority-owned media partners in the United States. dentsu says the industry payment terms of 60, and up to 120 days, have put an enormous strain on minority owned media businesses, especially the smaller ones. “The stress that delayed payments places on cash flow affects both the ability to continue day-to-day operations, as well as limiting the ability to expand and secure additional funding. By implementing 30-day payment terms, dentsu will provide a more impactful way to engage, support, and expand minority-owned media partners in the media ecosystem, and truly enable economic empowerment. This new offering will go into effect on October 1st for our US-based clients aligned with the new broadcast calendar.”
dentsu works with 67 Fortune 100 companies, including General Motors, The Home Depot, American Express, Subway and Proctor & Gamble. dentsu’s 2019 revenue was $2.4 billion. The company has 13,500 employees.
General Motors was the first company to make a similar change to its payment terms back in the Spring.
Jacki Kelley, CEO, dentsu Americas CEO Jacki Kelley said “From the start of our journey to create equity, we said we will not mistake activity for progress and this initiative shows the conviction of our commitment to achieve meaningful progress. General Motors was our inspiration after they pioneered this concept earlier this spring. Updating our payment terms for minority-owned business partners will enable them to more easily access capital, create more content, offer more programming opportunities and propel the cycle of growth. Lifting the burden of having to carry production costs is a key enabler to create equity in media.”
SBS CEO Raul Alarcon said dentsu’s newly adopted policy to implement 30-day payment terms is a new chapter in history for minority-owned media owners. “This offering is an unprecedented showing of support and solidarity to minority-owned media, and I feel this is the beginning of a new era of respect, understanding, and cooperation between the advertising community and minority media owners throughout the country.”
AURN CEO Chesley Maddox-Dorsey added that “dentsu’s game-changing announcement demonstrates that our business is valued as well as our financial success in the competitive business. With this strategic decision, dentsu removes a crucial financial barrier leading the way for their clients to do more business with Minority-owned Media companies based on an authentic connection with the target audience and not solely market capitalization or access to financial markets.”
NABOB President Jim Winston: “We at NABOB are extremely pleased and excited about the dentsu announcement that it will pay Black and other minority owned media companies in 30-days. In recent years, many ad agencies and advertisers have been paying on 90-day and up to 150-day schedules. Such delayed payments can be a source of major financial strain for NABOB members. We hope that this new dentsu policy will inspire other ad agencies and advertisers to adopt similar policies. This announcement is just one of many initiatives that dentsu has undertaken to provide leadership in the support of Black and other minority owned media. NABOB is grateful for dentsu’s leadership.
Mark Prince, SVP, Head of Economic Empowerment, dentsu said “I have witnessed first-hand the struggles many minority-owned media owners face in receiving timely payments and have spent my fair share of time working with agency accounting and investment groups to help resolve delayed invoices and push for faster payments. As we push Economic Empowerment, it was important to quickly develop a strong response from the start that tackles the urgent need to address the basic barriers our partners deal with in this space.”
Mike Law, US President, Investment – dentsu said “Building on our clients’ efforts to further economic inclusion, implementing 30-day payment terms for minority-owned media partners allows us to progress real change in the marketplace. This offering continues our commitment to champion meaningful and impactful progress and truly help our partners grow their businesses and establish long term success. We are excited to continue to work together with our clients and media partners to drive systemic change across every part of the ecosystem.”
This is crazy. And it can’t be legal.
It’s really hard to end discrimination when those attempting to end discrimination continue to practice discrimination themselves.
But, for a moment, let us set aside the fact that this is shining example of the discriminatory business practices we’ve all worked hard for decades to change.
Aren’t the legal terms of most broadcast invoices already stated as net 30 days? And the 90 day extension is is something that media companies offer, as a courtesy, to their agency clients which stems out of an era where paper snail mail invoicing was the only option? With today’s technology in the form of electronic invoicing, matching software, etc. effectively speeding up the process of invoicing and clearing of invoices to be paid, is there really any longer a need for media companies to continue to grant the additional 60 days. As agencies have now stated that they have the ability to pay in 30, why would media companies allow agencies to continue to hold balances owed for two additional months, keeping the interest earned by the multi millions of dollars for themselves? That would be absolutely ridiculous.
Convince me otherwise.
We will pay white-owned media in 30 days, everyone else has to wait. Now, how does that read? Oh, it’s like Jim Crow? So is dentsu’s new policy – only the color of the skin being discriminated against is different. When will the woke crowd learn that discrimination is wrong?
We absolutely 100% are in favor of helping minority-owned broadcasters. That said, this clearly is reverse discrimination.
Yet, the mainstream broadcasters are enabling this behavior by dentsu. dentsu should pay all their bills on time to all broadcasters, not 90 or 120 days late.
Simple solution…without obvious coordination on this (anti-trust concerns) ALL significant broadcasters in medium and major markets should hold dentsu to paying in 30 days- dentsu has now shown they can do that – or their schedule orders do not run. Simple.
It just takes iHeart, Audacy, and Beasley to implement this policy, and problem solved.
But they won’t.
You’re kidding me, right? Get ready for discrimination lawsuit in 3…2…1…
Filing it myself.
I will hold money legally owed you and continue to profit form it for an extra couple months unless I like the color of your skin. That is pretty much the definition of a racist act.
I would like to believe that this policy should be extended to ALL small-business broadcast and media owners, including the white owners, who struggle equally as much to make ends meet, while equally serving ALL of the community in which they operate.
Yes, lower-case black lives matter…as do everyone’s.
Let’s not carry ‘woke’ too far, so that it simply discriminates in another direction. I think Martin Luther King Jr. had something to say about that, on the whole skin color/content of character issue…
to all you white owned media, “drop dead”. Looks like I won’t be taking any more advertising from dentsu’s clients.