Cxmmunity Media thinks brands should be targeting multicultural gaming audiences — and the company has launched a new data platform dedicated to this task.
Ryan Johnson and Chris Peay founded the Atlanta-based Cxmmunity Media in 2020 with the goal of increasing diversity and representation in gaming, esports, and digital entertainment. Since then, the company has grown into a full-blown media conglomerate, spanning across an esports league, live events, and the anime culture brand Trap Sushi.
On June 9, Cxmmunity Media released its latest product, the Cxmmunity Cultural Intelligence platform, curating first-party data from across Cxmmunity’s portfolio for advertisers looking to understand trends and sentiment within a diverse gaming audience.
“In the work that we’ve been doing for the last five years, there’s an obvious interest from brands, gaming studios, and movie companies to increase their reach and market share across multicultural audiences,” Johnson said in an interview with GamesBeat. “These audiences, for the first time, are more segmented — they’re spread across different platforms, and now there are other interests and passions that need to be considered that historically have not been.”
The inspiration behind Cxmmunity Media’s new data platform came from the company’s direct experience working with brands and sponsors interested in reaching diverse audiences through parts of Cxmmunity’s inventory like the HBCU Esports League, a dedicated esports league for historically Black colleges and universities in the United States. Past sponsors for the HBCU Esports League include national brands like Verizon, Discover Financial Services, and Hot Pockets.
“We ourselves couldn’t find a scaled or authentic first-party data source around multicultural consumers that were interested across gaming, anime, and other digital interactive media platforms,” Johnson said. “As a leadership team, we said ‘hey, we’ve been collecting information about this audience inadvertently for the last five to six years, in the form of people signing up for our events. We have over 10,000 content creators that are part of the Cxmmunity creator collective.”
Johnson said Cxmmunity Media was planning to monetize its data platform in a similar fashion to data companies like Nielsen, with the company planning to issue regular cultural reports and work with partners on a more targeted, strategic basis, meeting with them monthly or quarterly to share insights relevant to their current goals.
“One of the insights we’ve been able to gather is, oftentimes, this audience segment and community is not even considered, or there’s not a lot of insight or clarity provided to the research teams on why there should be a larger media or marketing investment in targeting this audience segment,” Johnson said.
The launch of the Cxmmunity Cultural Intelligence platform represents an expansion for Cxmmunity Media, not a pivot. The company is not deprioritizing any of its other business arms to focus on the data platform, per Johnson, who said an October 2025 investment deal from Live Nation Urban’s Black Lily Capital Investment Fund had empowered his company to expand its business further.
“That was primarily to help us scale our event experience side of the business, so now I’m able to take a lot of my time and attention away from the actual operations and booking and all the nuances of putting on these live experiences, which is very heavy lift,” Johnson said.
Last year, Johnson moved from Atlanta to Los Angeles to help lead the next stage of Cxmmunity Media’s growth. He said Los Angeles’ nexus of gaming industry businesses and talent drove his decision to make the cross-country move.
“Being in LA has opened my eyes, and honestly opened doors for us now, to directly work with some of the largest studios,” he said.