The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday had an article ($) on online marketing to Hispanics. That in itself would ordinarily be great news – Hispanic online marketing is so big now that the WSJ covers it!

But the really interesting thing about this article was that the story wasn't how surprised they are that you can use the Internet to market to Hispanics. They took it for granted that advertisers reach Hispanics through online advertising. Rather, the article was discussing how marketers are re-thinking how they approach online marketing to Hispanics.

According to the article, MSN Latino and MRM Worldwide have figured out that not all Hispanics speak Spanish, and that sometimes you can reach them using English language advertising. Accord

ing to the article, second generation Hispanics are a “segment that is not necessarily as easy to understand and capture as their more Spanish-dominant immigrant counterpart,” so marketers have to reach out to second generation Hispanics using culturally relevant approaches rather than just language.

It's easy to make fun of the idea that it took Microsoft and Interpublic and millions of dollars to figure out that second generation Hispanics speak English, but it is actually an interesting and relevant article that touches on several key points, including that you can market to Hispanics online, that culture can matter as much as language, and that Hispanic marketing maybe isn't as easy as it looks.

The WSJ is still subscription only, so if you want a copy of the article, email me and I'll send it to you.

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