Pulpo Media, a digital Hispanic marketing agency, has announced a new data-driven platform to help companies better reach important segments of the Latino market. The platform, built on U.S. Census data and "terabytes" of proprietary data, is designed to help identify segments of the Latino population that conventional marketers might be missing.

The Latino population is growing in America, as is Latino buying power, especially among certain segments of the Hispanic community. Pulpo Media on Tuesday unveiled what it called the "(i)Hispanic Acculturation Model" to help its client companies -- which include Best Buy, Nike, FedEx, Disney, and other big names -- reach the smaller, younger, tech-savvy, bicultural segments of that market which, according to a Nielsen study this week, contributes to 40 percent of Latinos' collective $1.5 trillion buying power. In fact, these "Upscale Latinos," earning between $50,000 to $100,000 annually, make up the largest emerging consumer segment since the baby boomers, according to Nielsen.

"The (i)Hispanic [online Hispanics] Acculturation Model aggregates robust off-line market data, such as the 2012 U.S. Census and the annual American Community Survey, and combines them with terabytes of proprietary first and third-party (i)Hispanic data," stated Pulpo's announcement. Pulpo says some of those key data points include where they and their parents were born, how old they were when they immigrated, household language, and other metrics to measure how acculturated Latinos are. "The result is a deeply informed and easier process for brands and agencies to target valuable, previously misunderstood, segments of the (i)Hispanic market across the U.S., down to the zip code level."

One of the previously overlooked segments of the population exposed by Pulpo's new data platform is what the company calls "the 1.5-generation." This segment of Hispanics are technically first-generation or foreign-born, but they immigrated as children and were mostly educated in the U.S. Therefore, as adults, they tend to behave more like second-generation Latinos in their buying choices. Pulpo emphasizes that this segment of the Latino community isn't new, but had been unaccounted for in many previous data models, even though they make up 35 percent of the first-generation immigrant populace in America, according to Pulpo's research.

The 1.5-generation is just one segment the (i)Hispanic Acculturation Model takes into account, as Pulpo stresses that understanding that Latinos are not a monolithic group -- and that reaching U.S. Hispanics with different levels of acculturation -- requires better understanding of those differences.

"Understanding numerous factors and detailed information about U.S. Hispanics, at an individual (and household) level, is crucial to better reaching and touching them via marketing campaigns ... It is then so important to be able to activate in the digital space on these insights as this is not a homogenous group..." said Marla Skiko, Executive Vice President, Director Digital Innovation at SMG Multicultural in Pulpo's release. "Discerning detailed characteristics such as individual generational status, language preferences, proportion of life in the U.S., and online behavior are key to marketing effectively to the Hispanic market."

Acculturated Latinos are the leading segment in the U.S. Hispanic community for buying power, and the majority are online. But reaching them requires understanding them first, and Pulpo Media hopes the algorithms and troves of data it put into this new digital marketing platform will help it do just that.

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