On Thursday I also had the opportunity to attend the Portada Hispanic Digital and Print Media Conference in New York City. It was nice to finally see an event at least partially dedicated to Hispanic Digital media and marketing. It was a true testament to how far things have come in the last few years for the Hispanic online market.

As with any first time event, there were definitely some rough edges, but overall, it was a good event. The conference sessions basically alternated between digital and print. Here are some of my highlights from the digital sessions:

Session 1: Online Media: Increasing Sophistication in the Hispanic Marketplace

There were 3 presentations during this session. The first one introduced geo-targeting, and how you can use it in the Hispanic market. As an agency person, this was a little elementary, but Carlos Moreno from el Nuevo Dia de Puerto Rico presented an interesting case study on how American Airlines was targeting Florida-based Puerto Ricans with online ads hawking flights to the island.

The second presentation was a bit more interesting – Sarah Quinn from Location3 Media, a Colorado based SEM agency – offered an insightful presentation on using Spanish-language keywords optimally on Paid Search campaigns. Among the useful tactics she shared were 1) the opportunity to use international characters for competitive advantage, 2) using “long tail” keywords to leverage typically longer Spanish-speaker search phrases, 3) geo-modifying terms by adding in words like “New York” to a keyword string, and 4) her recommendation to use Spanish copy/creative whenever using Spanish keywords. I was surprised to not hear anything about targeting Hispanics with English-language keywords (a topic for another day I suppose).

The third case study was by Jacques Hart, from Televisa Digital. Jacques’ interesting presentation was about the different type of content available on the Internet, and the premium that he felt still should be placed on original entertainment content produced by companies such as Televisa. It was interesting so see that Televisa’s EsMas.com portal will be going head-to-head to with the other established U.S. Hispanic portals such as Univision.com (with whom they must share content?), Yahoo! Telemundo, Terra, and Starmedia.

Session 4 – The Client’s Perspective: Combining Print and Online Media
This was a very interesting case study presented by Marsha Lawrence, Senior Manager Strategy and Analytics at Best Buy. While Marsha’s case study skewed heavily towards Best Buy’s approach to buying Hispanic Print advertising, she gave an overview of their Digital marketing strategy, albeit General Market. BestBuy.com recently just launched a fully bilingual version of their Web site – from home page to order confirmation and everything in between! This is a major investment on their part. However, I was disappointed to hear little about Best Buy’s Hispanic online strategy. It sounded like their general market interactive agency, Avenue A, would be managing a very basic program in 2007 and 2008.

Session 5 – Case Studies: Combining Print and Online Media
This session was comprised of 3 case studies – one by ImpreMedia, one by People en Espanol, and a last one by Terra.com.

Erich Linker, SVP National Advertising Sales at Impremedia, provided an overview of how Impremedia is expanding their portfolio to include digital properties. I like their strategy, and it is obviously one that they have to implement to remain relevant as digital takes more and more budget from print, but I think they can do so much more. For those of you who don’t know, Impremedia is basically a holding company that has been buying up local Spanish-language newspapers around the U.S. during the last 4 years (including La Opinion in LA, La Raza in Chicago, Hoy & El Diario in New York). I am looking forward to the relaunch of their sites, and hopefully a reinvigorated digital strategy to take advantage of the goldmine their are sitting on.

I was extremely impressed with Jacqueline Hernandez Fallous, Publisher of People en Espanol (PEE). PEE will be relaunching a new bilingual site, with different and relevant content for English and Spanish-dominant, primarily female audiences. I think they will see success very quickly (Hispanics love gossip!)

Finally, Michelle Azan from Terra.com presented a case study on how they teamed up with Cosmopolitan en Espanol to launch a Joint Venture online. I love seeing natural partners team up and work together – Terra with their technology, Web editorial and online ad sales expertise and Cosmo with their fashion and lifestyle editorial content. Again, I think this is a win-win for Terra, Cosmo and our industry.

Session 6: Media Buyer Panel: What would Media Buyers Like to see more of in 2008

The final session was setup as a true panel, with the goal of some frank and “controversial” discussion of what is next for Hispanic digital and print. The panel was nicely setup, with 2 agency buyers (Jerly Marquez @ LatinVox and John Santiago @ Media8), another agency person (Ilia Leon @ ZO Multicultural), 2 clients (Traci Dinkins @ GM and Lilian Gil @ J&J) and a print ad network (Jose Cruz @ Metro Newspaper). A couple of thoughts. First, where was the online ad network (Admixture would have been perfect!). Second, the discussion got very theoretic, with a lot of talk about “online brand ambassadors,” “key performance indicators,” and “metrics.” There was definitely a lot of energy, but I think the discussion missed the opportunity to paint a picture, in concrete terms, of what Hispanic advertising would look like in 2008 and beyond. I know that’s why I was in the room.

All in all, kudos to Portada for putting together a pioneering and groundbreaking event tackling Hispanic Digital and Print. I am very much looking forward to next year’s event…

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