Culture Hive Media Group Debuts Cultural Relevance Score With Google, WPP Media Backing
More than 150 million people in the U.S. belong to multicultural communities, over 42% of the country's population as of early 2025, according to a 2024 U.S. Census Bureau and Claritas report. Los Angeles startup Culture Hive Media Group built its 'Cultural Relevance Score' (CRS) to close a gap founder Joe Lige says exists between that population and the ads reaching it. Lige, a veteran of Oracle, OpenX and Experian, said he started the project after seeing a 'culturally misplaced ad' and wondering how it reached mass distribution. An advisory board of executives from Google, AT&T Advertising, WPP Media, PubMatic, Xandr, LiveRamp, OpenX, Oracle and CBS has now joined to develop the AI-powered metric, which scores websites, creative, ads, media plans, bundle IDs and magazine articles against 'culturally grounded audience personas' built from shared values, symbols, habits and identities.
Campaigns that treat multicultural audiences as demographic segments miss the cultural context CRS is built to measure, and the score gives planners a way to check creative and placements against community values before a plan goes live. CRS already integrates into ad platforms, SSPs and DSPs to curate inventory for connected TV apps, display and social media, so the scoring can inform planning, buying and optimization across those channels. The system produces recommendations today, and Lige said the company has partnerships 'leaning in that direction' of eventually generating the creative or placement changes automatically.