What TelevisaUnivision’s New Global Spanish-Language Streamer Means for Marketers

When TelevisaUnivision, formerly Univision, first forayed into the streaming space last year with the debut of PrendeTV and the acquisition of Vix, the Spanish-language media company knew that was just the start. The company lifted the curtains Wednesday morning on a new two-tier global streaming service. Under the ViX brand name, the service includes an AVOD tier and an SVOD tier, branded as ViX+. The offering will be in one app that hosts more than 50,000 hours of Spanish-language content, and combines the company’s existing streaming options in the U.S., Mexico and Latin America, including the AVOD service Prende TV and SVOD service Blim TV, which the company acquired as part of its recent merger with Mexico’s Televisa. But the company has sunset the Prende TV and Blim TV names, with all content now under the ViX umbrella. “We’re taking all three platforms and combining them into one, but on one platform,” TelevisaUnivision ad sales chief Donna Speciale told Adweek. “ViX will be the AVOD service, just like Prende TV was. Our consumers and our viewers are not going to feel any difference, it’s just going to be a very seamless transformation.” Spanish-Language Media Titans Univision and Televisa Complete $4.8 Billion Merger Univision first acquired Vix in February 2021, just weeks after announcing it would debut its own streaming service PrendeTV. Following those moves, the company had a “huge, successful upfront," said Speciale. “We’ve really just been taking this year and going through the whole process." The new ViX offering will be available in 19 territories, including the U.S. and most of Spanish-speaking Latin America. The AVOD ViX offering will debut on March 31, and ViX+ will debut in the second half of the year. The AVOD tier will have more than 100 channels of live programming, as well as over 40,000 hours of on-demand content. Some of that live content includes news and sports in front of the paywall. Big upfront plans Following the ViX rollout, Speciale sees a big opportunity for the company in this year's upfront. Streaming will play a much larger role in this year's negotiations, but Speciale said TelevisaUnivision will sell streaming the same way it did before, just with “a lot more enhancements.” Some of those include pause ads and shoppable ads, which previously were not offered on Univision’s streaming platforms. Speciale said the company currently has about 120 advertisers on the platform, after debuting with 15-20 launch partners. “Our goal is to have our messaging be a very natural experience,” said Speciale. “We’re being very judicious and careful on what the experiences on our services look like, because we know they have a lot of choices to make.” Speciale doesn’t see ViX as a separate entity to sell, but rather looks at all of the company’s platforms as a holistic conversation. “We’re selling audiences now,” explained Speciale. “It’s really about coming to Univision for the Hispanic audience across all our platforms, and to me ViX is an added reach. It’s not one or the other.” However, Speciale will "sell hard" when it comes to ViX, "because I think it's a huge add," she said. "It’s not cannibalizing linear, so to me clients should want to be adding it to their footprint," especially because ViX audiences are younger than the ones watching Univision's linear properties. In last year's upfront, the company had just rolled out its streaming offerings, "so we were just talking about it,” said Speciale. “Now we have a year behind our belts, now we have more channels, more hours, now sports, now news. It’s going to be a huge priority for us.” Setting an in-person upfront TelevisaUnivision had been the only upfront week presenter that hadn't yet committed to returning to an in-person event in May, for the first time since 2019. But Speciale told Adweek that the company will indeed hold an in-person presentation on May 17. “We’re really excited about it,” said Speciale. “We’ll obviously be showcasing and showing ViX, and all of our other linear products. But also we’ve done a lot of transformation within Univision; there’s just so much to talk about.” SVOD opportunities for advertisers When the SVOD offering ViX+ debuts, will have more than 10,000 hours of Spanish-language content, including more than 50 original productions. ViX+ is leaning into the power of streaming live sports, feature more than 3,000 live soccer games a year and snagged the exclusive rights to all the UEFA Champions League matches in Spanish. While ViX+ is an SVOD service, advertisers will still be able to get their messaging on the tier via the sports content. “Everything else in ViX+ is no messaging; sports will be,” said Speciale. “We’re going to up our game with that. You’re going to see a lot more advanced advertising, a lot more sponsorships, a lot more road blocking, there’s just going to be a lot more that clients are going to be able to own.” The company is incorporating options for customers upgrading to ViX+ inside the AVOD programming, while keeping users within the same platform. “If you see a program within the app that has a little ViX+ logo on it, if that’s of interest to you and you click it, if you’re not a subscriber the only way to do it is to get through that subscription,” said Speciale. Subscribers to the SVOD tier will be able to go back and forth between AVOD and SVOD content within the same interface. “It's a seamless experience for our viewers, whether it's an AVOD experience or a subscription experience and you can go back and forth to both,” said Speciale.