Group Black, the company that initially emerged with an ambitious mission to champion and scale the presence of Black-owned media businesses, is now undergoing a significant transformation in both scope and strategy. While its original purpose centered on redirecting advertising investments toward publishers led by Black entrepreneurs, the organization is now broadening its horizons by launching a new initiative known as Portrait Media Group. This development signals a move away from a narrowly defined audience and toward the creation of a far more inclusive platform designed to resonate with a multiracial and values-driven demographic.
In a LinkedIn post published on Tuesday, Bonin Bough—Group Black’s cofounder and chief strategy officer—unveiled the new venture. He described Portrait Media Group as a pioneering media entity powered simultaneously by human creativity and artificial intelligence, explicitly crafted to serve what he referred to as “Gen Next.” By this term, Bough meant the rising generation of media consumers and cultural drivers who cannot be neatly categorized through simplistic demographic markers such as ethnicity or race. Instead, Portrait Media Group aims to connect with audiences by focusing on their underlying values, interests, and behavioral tendencies. This philosophy reflects an evolution from traditional segmentation toward a psychology and lifestyle-based approach to marketing.
Bough elaborated that Gen Next includes a wide array of communities: Black, Latinx, Asian, and multi-ethnic groups, as well as white audiences who define themselves more through their ethical principles and cultural affinities than through traditional identity markers. These are individuals, in Bough’s assessment, who are actively shaping the future of media consumption and marketing trends by demanding authenticity, inclusivity, and alignment with their social values. His post hinted that more details about the scope and ambitions of Portrait Media Group will be revealed on September 8, intriguingly phrased as the moment when “the frame comes into full focus.” He also announced a structural shift, noting that Group Black itself would rebrand and transition into Group Black Holdings, suggesting the creation of a larger umbrella organization encompassing multiple ventures and investments.
When Business Insider reached out to Group Black the prior week for insights on this repositioning and other transformative changes within the company, the organization requested until Tuesday morning to respond. Yet, when the agreed-upon time arrived, no official statement was released, leaving unanswered questions about internal strategy, operational adjustments, and external partnerships.
Group Black’s trajectory must be understood in the context of the cultural and corporate environment that existed when the company first entered the media space in 2021. Its launch came directly in the aftermath of the protests that followed the killing of George Floyd, a flashpoint that catalyzed a wider national reckoning on systemic racism, equity, and representation. In response to this social awakening, numerous household-name advertisers—including giants like Coca-Cola and Walmart—publicly vowed to channel greater portions of their advertising budgets toward Black-owned publishers. At the time, such outlets accounted for less than one percent of overall U.S. advertising spending, a strikingly small fraction considering the demographic diversity of the population.
Against this backdrop, Group Black emerged as one of the most prominent advocates of change. The start-up was founded by an influential circle of figures within advertising and media, notably including entrepreneur Richelieu Dennis and the aforementioned Bonin Bough. The firm quickly secured a $75 million media investment commitment from GroupM, a leading media purchasing agency that would later undergo its own rebranding as WPP Media. Although WPP Media has remained silent when asked about the current state of its partnership with Group Black, this investment gave the company early credibility. At industry gatherings such as the Cannes Lions advertising festival in 2023, the visibility of Group Black and its founders demonstrated the powerful position the company held within conversations about equity in marketing.
Despite these early wins, Group Black’s journey was not without turbulence. The company simultaneously faced the common growing pains of a start-up and the broader shifts in the political and business climates concerning diversity, equity, and inclusion. Statistical research from PQ Media revealed that, despite promises from advertisers, the proportion of spending dedicated to multicultural media hardly changed between 2018 and 2023. This stagnation highlighted not only challenges in fulfilling pledges but also difficulties in sustaining momentum once broader political support for DEI initiatives began to waver.
From the outset, Group Black had set a highly ambitious target: pledging to facilitate the allocation of half a billion dollars-worth of ad spending toward Black-owned outlets. However, as Bonin Bough candidly acknowledged to Ad Age, the company ultimately fell short of this lofty goal. He nevertheless insisted in his more recent statements that the establishment of Portrait Media Group should not be seen as an abandonment of those original ideals but rather as a natural evolution, one that seeks to preserve their foundational mission while adapting it to new challenges and opportunities.
The core structure of Group Black’s business model relied upon a straightforward yet aspirational concept: act as a vehicle to funnel advertisers’ dollars toward Black-owned outlets in an industry where such businesses faced persistent underinvestment. Working through partnerships with major platforms, such as NBCUniversal’s streaming service Peacock, Group Black was able to secure relationships with more than 30 different brands during its launch year. In this arrangement, the company acted as both aggregator and distributor, taking a percentage of the revenue that flowed through. They also initiated content partnerships with prominent players such as Procter & Gamble for programming on Fox’s Tubi and collaborations with Everyday Health. On top of this, Group Black expressed intentions to acquire ownership stakes in various media organizations as part of its long-term strategy.
Yet, the momentum collided with shifting external factors. The U.S. political climate began souring on corporate DEI commitments; lawsuits and activist campaigns from conservative groups pressured many leading companies to reduce or abandon their diversity programs. The Washington Post, in a telling analysis, observed that among companies listed on the S&P 500, references to diversity, equity, and inclusion in formal corporate filings had plummeted by 2024, averaging just four mentions per company, compared with more than twelve a mere two years earlier. Commoditized ad dollars began trickling in at a far slower pace than anticipated, and Group Black struggled to present advertisers with sufficiently large-scale, competitively priced audiences.
Additionally, while Group Black pursued opportunities to acquire high-profile media outlets—including marquee names such as BET, Vice Media, and Vox Media—none of those deals came to fruition. Compounding matters further, NBCUniversal’s exclusive ad sales agreement with Group Black for Black-led programming on Peacock is set to expire by the end of September. Once the contract ends, NBCU will resume control of those advertising sales directly, eliminating a revenue stream that had previously distinguished Group Black’s offering. Well before this expiration, Group Black had already begun signaling a strategic widening of its scope by extending its focus to include other underrepresented demographics, such as women and non-Black minority groups. This prefigured the transition into Portrait Media Group.
Internal instability further complicated the landscape. Some publishers that partnered with Group Black expressed frustration, alleging that the company retained an unusually high percentage of revenue from deals and failed to deliver the supportive infrastructure, business resources, and networking benefits they had been led to expect. These sentiments were exacerbated by a wave of leadership departures. Among those was Cavel Khan, a well-regarded executive with previous experience at Twitter and Vice Media, who joined Group Black in 2022 and advanced to chief growth officer within a year. Although Khan has stepped back from his formal role, he is said to remain connected as an advisor. Equally significant was the quiet exit of cofounder and former CEO Travis Montaque in June 2024. After leaving, Montaque launched a new media venture called Mucho, which positions itself as a bilingual, video-oriented platform centered on amplifying Gen Z Hispanic perspectives across major social networks such as Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, as well as through a dedicated channel on Peacock. His departure followed that of Richelieu Dennis, who had exited more than a year earlier and shifted his attention to his new project, Sundial Technology & Media Group.
Following these high-profile departures, Group Black’s governance structure was further shaken when three distinguished board members—Ursula Burns, former CEO of Xerox; Seth Kaufman, formerly of Moët Hennessy North America; and Vivek Shah, CEO of Ziff Davis—also resigned from their posts. Shah’s Ziff Davis had once invested $15 million in Group Black. In parallel, the company reportedly undertook layoffs, though the exact scale of the workforce reductions remains unclear.
On top of leadership restructuring and operational contractions, Group Black became embroiled in legal disputes. In October of 2024, two companies partially owned by Essence Ventures, itself tied to cofounder Richelieu Dennis’s Sundial venture, filed suit against Group Black. They alleged mishandling of approximately $20 million, asserting that funds originally lent were instead misappropriated to benefit Group Black and Holler, another media start-up founded by Montaque. Group Black formally denied the claims, stipulating in court filings that the financial arrangement was a loan but rejecting any wrongdoing. The case remains unresolved. Additionally, Audiomob, an advertising agency partner responsible for supplying mobile app inventory to Group Black, sued in May to collect nearly $181,000 in allegedly unpaid invoices. Although Audiomob eventually moved to dismiss the claim after receiving a partial payment, the dispute underscored cash-flow tensions within the company.
Through all of these evolutions, challenges, and reconfigurations, one constant remains: Group Black has sought to position itself as both a disruptor and a bridge in the media ecosystem, leveraging moments of social reckoning to reshape the flow of advertising capital. The creation of Portrait Media Group represents the newest stage in this vision. Rather than abandoning the cause of underrepresented media ownership, the pivot signifies an attempt to ensure resilience and relevance by aligning with the increasingly complex cultural fabric of its core audiences. Whether this strategic redirection will succeed where earlier promises fell short remains to be seen, yet it decisively marks a turning point for Group Black as it transitions into a wider, more multifaceted media presence.
Sourse: https://www.businessinsider.com/group-black-pivots-portrait-media-group-launch-2025-9
