Think Multicultural

In the same article by eMarketer that I mentioned before, they go on to say that a majority of Hispanics prefer to have the option of seeing websites in Spanish and a full quarter of them say that the websites they visit must be in Spanish.

Then it goes on to say that Hispanic online advertising was up 32% in 2006, which was even more than online advertising grew in the general market.

This is an amazing statistic. It essentially says that advertisers are recognizing that Hispanics are online and are targeting them online just about as quickly as they can. Although $132 million isn’t a huge market, it isn’t pocket change, and at growth rates like that it can’t be ignored.

[I’m starting to feel like a cheerleader more than an observer, but these numbers just keep getting bigger. I can’t be held responsible that this continues to be a great market.]

An article today in eMarketer trumpets the fact that Spanish-language TV was the second fastest growing area in media in 2006 (after Internet), but at the same time notes that only 3.2% of all national TV and print ads are in Spanish.

The article then goes on to cite that Fisher Price has stopped advertising in Spanish as evidence that advertisers don’t find Spanish-language advertising effective and don’t believe that Hispanics have disposable income.

It seems that the 3.2% number is more an indication that this is still a very young market with lots of room to grow. I think the more interesting numbers are 16.6% and $5.6 billion. Those are the growth rate of Spanish language TV and print advertising in 2006 and the total size of that market.

Listen to anyone at a Hispanic ad agency these days and they’ll tell you that they’re competing with the big general market agencies who are falling all over themselves to get into Hispanic advertising. Although this market is small, advertisers aren’t stupid. They see the demographic trends. They know that Hispanics are the fastest growing ethnic demo in the country and have almost a billion dollars in spending power.

Fisher Price will come back around. Or lose their shirts.

I was talking the other day to someone who does not work in multicultural advertising. In fact he doesn’t know much about either multicultural or advertising. He asked me, “Where is the Hispanic market in its development of websites? Is it behind the general market curve so that there will be a lot of them coming online in the next few years or is it a mature market?”

Hard to say, really.

I think everyone assumes that it’s a growing market. According to the Pew Report, online access and Internet usage among Hispanics is growing quickly, as is broadband access. With this growth in access, one would assume there will be a corresponding growth in websites by and for Hispanics. However, I haven’t seen any research to back this up. If anyone has hard numbers to back up these reasonable assumptions, I’d love to see them.