Think Multicultural

Last week, the New York Times did a story saying that the candidates for president are splitting along party lines on whether to change the military’s “Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell” policy regarding gays in the military. The Democratic candidates are all in favor of allowing gay men and lesbians to serve in the military. The Republican candidates are against it.

The story goes on to say that there are political reasons for the Democrats’ position – “Gay men and lesbians make up an important part of the Democratic Party’s political and fund-raising base, and voters in general are increasingly tolerant on gay issues related to employment and discrimination.” It states that 52% of Americans favored allowing gay and lesbian people into the military in 1994, and 60% were in favor by 2006.

Also last week, media outlets reported on the release of the 2006 Gay Press Report, released by Prime Access Inc. and Rivendell Media. According to the report, ad spending in gay and lesbian publications increased 5.2% last year and has grown at roughly three times the rate as general market consumer magazines. Additionally, the number of Fortune 500 companies that were active in the GLBT consumer market increased from 19 in 1994 to 183 in 2006.

So over that same 1994 – 2006 period, while 8% of America was coming around on gays in the military, 33% of the Fortune 500 was coming around on gays in the consumer market. I like to think that’s because the leaders of the Fortune 500 are smarter and more perceptive than the average American, and not because they had a smaller number to start from.

Regardless, both groups are moving in the right direction.

Yesterday’s “News Briefs” email from Hispanic Market Weekly had the headline “Advertising Spending Mixed in Spanish-Language Media.” Turns out that TNS Media Intelligence released its results for the first quarter of 2007.

So I opened up the HMW email to see how the Hispanic ad market is doing:

- TV up 3.7% to $985.5 million
- magazines up 14.3% to $35.6 million
- newspapers down 1.9% to $83.4 million
- online… um… online… online? Bueller? Bueller?

It appears that online isn’t Spanish-Language Media according to somebody. Time to put on the Sherlock Holmes hat.

The HMW email said that TNS doesn’t cover radio, but no mention of online.

So I went to the TNS release. It actually does cover online spending. Internet spending as a whole was up 16.7% to $2.7 billion(!), but TNS doesn’t break online into subcategories the same way it does TV, magazines, newspapers, and radio, so no Spanish language breakout of online.

And contrary to the HMW release, TNS covers radio too, just not Spanish language radio.

So TNS doesn’t think Spanish language Internet advertising is worth breaking out. That’s fine, they don’t break out any sort of Internet advertising. And they don’t break out Spanish language radio or outdoor advertising either. But you would think (OK, I would think) Hispanic Market Weekly would recognize, in an email newsletter no less, that there’s more missing from the TNS report than radio (I’m sure the Spanish language outdoor advertising guys are annoyed).

Hispanic online market was estimated at $132 million in 2006 (Hispanic Business 12/4/06) and should be considerably larger than that in 2007. At that rate, spending on Hispanic Internet ads was almost certainly larger than the Spanish language magazine ad spend.

So where’s the love?

The QuieroLatino Blog has a post today debating whether to launch their Latin dating site in Spanish or English.

From a “gaining subscribers” point of view, I have no idea. Building websites isn’t my business. But from an “attracting advertisers” point of view, the answer seems a little counterintuitive. Just about everywhere you look, people are talking about the growth in population and spending power of second and third generation US Hispanics. These are the Hispanics who are English dominant or at least bilingual. However, when an advertiser seeks to target the Hispanic market online, they usually insist on Spanish language only or predominantly Spanish language creative and websites.

Is this preference for the Spanish language online because advertisers feel that their general market campaigns are reaching more acculturated Hispanics, and therefore they only need to reach unacculturated, Spanish speaking Hispanics through their Hispanic campaigns?

Or do the Hispanic agencies encourage clients to target Spanish speaking Hispanics? Some have argued that the real advantage that Hispanic agencies have over general market agencies trying to enter the Hispanic market is the language barrier. Do they try to maintain that advantage by telling clients that they have to reach Hispanics in Spanish?

Now I don’t want to bite the hand that feeds us. Most of Admixture’s Hispanic channel sites are in Spanish, and numerous studies have shown that Hispanics react strongly and positively to Spanish language advertising. I’m just curious whether acculturated Hispanics are being neglected.