Hispanic Millenials Spur Growth of Latino Media Market, Increase in Targeted Advertising Spending
Los Angeles, New York and Miami are among the top 25 cities with the largest Hispanic markets, experiencing a huge upsurge in Hispanic branding.
Billions have gone toward discretionary spending; the Spanish-language broadcast programs "Lo Que La Vida Me Robo" and "Por Siempre Mi Amor" reign as prime-time program leaders, and the English-language series "Modern Family," starring Sophia Vergara, tops the charts as well.
Advertising Age, the leading source of analysis and news for the media and marketing community, published "Hispanic Fact Pack 2014," its an annual guide to Hispanic marketing and media. The report examines Hispanic viewership and technological trends, as well as market growth and marketer spending habits.
Millennials, particularly Hispanic millennials, power markets as trendsetters and consumers, prompting the Hispanic media market to surpass the overall U.S. growth in media spending. The mainstream media market increased by just 0.9 percent in 2013, while the U.S. Hispanic media market increased by an incredible 8.1 percent, to $8.3 billion.
Procter & Gamble Co., AT&T, L'Oreal and other lead marketers in the Hispanic sector have committed to increasing their spending anywhere from 26 to 38 percent. Fellow leaders, Kraft Foods Group and JC Penney Co. have done the same and used the World Cup to capture Hispanics' attention -- one creating a social-media monitoring hub to suggest World Cup-appropriate recipes, and the other creating Latina-focused Spanish-Language ads that ran on English-language networks as well.
U.S. Hispanic agencies have also benefited; their revenue showed a growth of 5.7 percent in 2013, to $597 million. LatinWorks, which was No. 16 a decade ago, now ranks number one on the list of 50 largest U.S. Hispanic agencies. LatinWorks was followed by the biggest independent agency, Lopez Negrete Communications, which also moved up the list.
The need for insight has created new roles for Latinos in many companies. Nuria Santamaria was hired as the first multicultural lead for Twitter during late 2013. Liz Sarachek Black, former chief revenue officer at Terra, joined CC Media Holdings' Clear Channel Media and Entertainment as executive VP of Hispanic strategy and sales during August of 2014.
The report also indicated that Hispanics are divided when it comes to preferences of language in the media. Exactly 53.4 percent of Hispanics prefer English-only information when online, while fewer require English when using other sources, such as reading (38.2 percent), watching TV (33.4 percent) and listening to the radio (28.9 percent). Many prefer "mostly English with some Spanish" when reading (25.3 percent), watching TV (31.9 percent), listening to radio (29 percent) and when online (19.6 percent). And some prefer their media in only Spanish, when reading (20.6 percent), watching TV (12.8 percent), listening to radio (19.4 percent) and when online (13.3 percent).
Because Hispanics are heavily invested in traditional media and technology, they encounter more ads than non-Hispanics.
With smartphones, game consoles, computers and tablets, they're likelier to see advertisements from companies likeToyota or General Motors when using chat, downloading apps, streaming videos, using GPS, reading publications, blogging, social networking, browsing the web, playing games and listening to music than non-Hispanics, simply because of higher use.
More than half of smartphones and tablets owned by Hispanics are Google Android products, while 38.1 percent of smartphones and 47 percent of tablets are Apple products.
For Hispanic millennials, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest aren't simply used for socializing. Rather, the platforms are used to follow their favorite brands or companies (23.5 percent compared to 20.2 percent non-Hispanic), use social sharing and networking websites to tell others about companies and products that they like (23.9 percent compared to 20.2) and post ratings or reviews online (18.2 percent compared to 17.8). But slightly fewer Hispanics click on others' links, pay attention to the reviews of other consumers or access social networking sites through other devices.