In 2003, the Hispanic advertising industry enjoyed bigger and better TV spot productions than in ’02. Al-though there was a general slowdown due to decreased ad spending in the beginning of the year, by the end of the year, we saw overall budgets surpassing ’02.
One reason for such overall growth was the increased number of Hispanic advertising agencies that were no longer just translating from general market scripts, but were instead producing original creative. The His-panic spots of ’03 were "sexier"—more cutting edge. There was even an increased use of Latino celebrities.
Because of this "hotter" creative, we noticed that more of the top general market directors were interested in U.S. Hispanic spot boards. These directors found the creative attractive, and realized how much potential there was in this growing industry. In some instances, these general market directors were even willing to sacrifice part of their normal fee in order to establish contacts within the industry and add Hispanic spots to their reel.
We expect to see greater ad spending on the U.S. Hispanic market this year. (In ’03, advertisers committed $3.4 billion, which represented three percent of total ad budgets.) There will also be increasing viewership of Span-ish TV (even among bilinguals), a continued explosion of Span-ish digital cable, and the continued emergence of ads designed to target the Hispanic consumer airing on English-language TV (i.e., the successful Budweiser and Volkswagen ads).
As represented by the proliferation of Spanish-language media, the Hispanic market is not one monolithic segment of the population. Instead, it is a complex group comprised of many segments with different cultural nuances and origins, united by language. Spanish continues to be the language of choice among Hispanics, with nine out of 10 Hispanics speaking Spanish. Furthermore, 58 percent of U.S. Hispanics are Spanish dominant and only 29 percent are bilingual. This should be a wake-up call to those advertisers who have not yet tapped into this lucrative market.
A specific example of the proliferation of Spanish-language media is the fact that Spanish-language digital cable has experienced phenomenal growth. Galavision, owned by Univision, has one of the largest reaches with a mixture of sports, music, children’s programming, news, movies and telenovelas. Via-com’s MTV Español and VH-Uno offer music aimed at His-panic youth. Other networks available include Discovery en Español, CNN en Español, El Canal del Tiempo (The Weather Channel) and TU tv.
The Spanish-language networks are also expanding to satisfy the voracious appetites of sports fans by adding FOX Sports Español and Gol TV. ESPN is launching the 24-hour ESPN en Español this year. Even with all these channels, however, Hispanics in the U.S. still don’t have as many choices as the general market, so we can expect even more Spanish-language media in the future.
