Advertisers Point and Click To Find Hispanic Audiences

The Hispanic population is growing faster than any other ethnic group in the U.S. Hispanic efforts are components in many national ad campaigns. And Hispanic agencies are growing so rapidly, many of them are among the biggest shops in their region. Now marketers are increasingly turning to the Web to reach Spanish-speaking audiences. More than 12 million U.S. Hispanics are online, and the number is increasing at a rate of 15-20 percent a year, according to comScore Media Metrix in Reston, Va. So far, online ad spending targeting that group has been modest—$28 million last year, according to Hispanic Business magazine. That's a tiny fraction of general online ad spending (which the Interactive Advertising Bureau estimates at $6.38 billion for 2002), but it's a growing one: Media planning sources estimate the market this year at $40 million. This week alone, a cyber campaign for the Honda Civic aimed at young Hispanic men is breaking on Spanish-language site YupiMSN; Bank of America is launching a financial-services site on Yahoo! en Español; and L'Oréal's Matrix line of hair-care products kicks off a campaign on Telemundo.com. Verizon and Allstate are among the other companies that have done campaigns recently on Hispanic Internet sites. Much of the advertising is tied to e-commerce. Hispanics spent an estimated $4.3 billion online last year, according to comScore data, said Richard Israel, the company's vp of Hispanic marketing solutions. That's about 6 percent of total e-commerce spending. Since Hispanics represent 13 percent of the population, they are not spending as much proportionately as the general market. But Israel anticipates the gap will narrow in the coming years. "It's still early here, but I think the evidence is showing that [for] marketers who put money in the U.S. Hispanic market, in particular in online investment, the dividends are going to pay," he said. "Like many U.S. companies, we're starting to recognize the opportunity to market to the U.S.-based Hispanic audience," said Robbyn Holmes, svp of e-commerce marketing at Bank of America. "This is a very fast-growing segment online, and when we looked at the opportunity, it made sense to add an online component to our existing marketing mix of radio, television and print." According to Nielsen/NetRatings, the four biggest advertisers in February on Hispanic Web sites like Univision and Terra.com were Columbia House, Allstate, Ford Motor Co. and Office Depot, based on number of impressions. That's a dramatic change from 2001, when the No. 1 brand advertising on such sites was Western Union. (The others included AOL and a number of dot-coms, including Fiera.com and Latino.com, both of which are now out of business.) AOL last week inked a deal with Univision to bring more Spanish-language content to its site in hopes of driving Hispanics to its broadband services. The partnership is kicking off with a TV campaign on Univision being developed by Casanova Pendrill in Irvine, Calif. Many advertisers are gravitating to Hispanic online campaigns based on a growing amount of research on Hispanics' Internet activity. For example, Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass., found Hispanics are active in online banking, and a Roslow Research Group study reported that 70 percent of U.S. Hispanics said they would use the Web to research a car purchase. Online music, entertainment and sports sites and news sites about Latin America are also particularly popular with the Hispanic audience. But some say spending by advertisers still has yet to reach critical mass. Carlos Santiago of Santiago Solutions Group, a marketing strategy consultancy in San Francisco, said he has "yet to see the big wave we've all been waiting for." Instead, he said, "I think we are seeing some smart advertisers out there who are allocating more consistently a portion of advertising expenditures online." Still, Robert Santiago, account director at La Agencia de Orci & Asociados in Los Angeles, said his agency is recommending online buys for all of its clients, and cited Orci's Honda campaign on YupiMSN as an example. "This is a very elusive audience, and Honda is not going to reach them by marketing on Telemundo or Univision," Santiago said. "They want to reach the entry-level car buyers, the youth of today, who can't imagine life without a computer." Vivianna Barrera, manager of interactive marketing for L'Oreal's Matrix, says the Telemundo.com campaign, created by Avenue A in New York, is the company's second online Hispanic campaign. An advertorial placed last year on Univision.com resulted in a significant increase of registrants to its Spanish-language database, she said. Liz Saracheck, Yahoo!'s executive director of sales for U.S. Hispanic, said the market has been heating up in the past six months "partly because we finally have more research that shows the audience and the activity and the behavior." More data is on the way. Nielsen's NetRatings said last week that it has signed a five-year deal with Univision to provide better tracking of Hispanic consumer behavior online. "We'll be able to provide new rich, detailed information about what Hispanic Internet surfers are doing," said Jed Meyer, svp of business development for Nielsen NetRatings. "At the end of the day, what will really make marketers move is the numbers, the hard-core evidence," said Monica Gadsby, managing director of Tapestry, a multicultural division of Publicis' Starcom MediaVest Group. "When Nielsen began measuring Hispanic television viewership in 1992, that revolutionized the marketplace overnight. I certainly expect the same will happen with the online component."

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Advertisers Point and Click To Find Hispanic Audiences

Michelle Jeffers

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