Think Multicultural

Fox International Channels announced today that they have acquired ClickDiario from LiveDoor. This will give Fox an expanded online presence in Latin America and, to a lesser extent, among Spanish-speaking people in the US.

This is interesting for a couple of reasons. Along with acquisition of MySpace and the rumored discussions with Yahoo!, it’s a further development in News Corp.’s plans to get into the online market in a big way. And because ClickDiario is primarily focused on Latin America and the acquisition was done through Fox International Channels, it shows that News Corp. isn’t just taking a US-centric view, but rather is thinking globally. The US isn’t the center of the Internet anymore. The web is truly worldwide.

It’s also another acquisition in the ad network market. The wave of ad network acquisitions was started when Google acquired Doubleclick and included WPP buying 24/7 Real Media. It seemed like the consolidation in the market might be slowing down after some of those large transactions among the bigger players, but this may be a sign that there’s further consolidation to be done in the ad network space.

The Miami Herald did a very interesting five-part series on Afro-Latin Americans. (HT: Republica Update). The series largely addresses the issues of race and heritage in Latin America and what it is like to be black in a Latin country.

The Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies recently did a study on what it meant to be Latino. Their findings were that what makes someone in the US a Latino is not skin color or country of origin, but a feeling of belonging to the Latino culture and being connected to a Latino heritage.

At Admixture we have a Hispanic channel and we have an African-American channel. They’re completely separate and don’t have websites in common. However, we also have a Young\Urban\Multicultural channel that has sites from both of the other two, in recognition that in the United States, particularly among younger generations, sometimes you’re not only “Hispanic” or not only “African-American” but that identity can go much deeper and also much broader.

I got a free trial to the Hispanic Web Monitor service. I must say, it’s pretty cool. I haven’t talked to them about pricing, but I have really enjoyed my free trial. If you’re in the Hispanic market, it’s worth looking into.