In case you didn’t notice, Batanga is building a juggernaut down in Miami and is looking to take on Univision.com as the go-to source for Hispanic online content.

Most recently, Batanga confirmed that it is acquiring HispanoClick, a Hispanic online ad network. In addition to strategic moves, Batanga is advertising like crazy. They recently hired a new ad agency and have gradually started advertising in a big way.

Normally that isn’t interesting. If I had a nickel for every Hispanic website that started up with a lot of buzz, PR, and advertising, I would have a lot of nickels. But what’s interesting is that Batanga is getting some traction. You can tell that Batanga’s making some headway not only by the numbers that they’re trumpeting everywhere, but by the fact that they’ve woken the sleeping giant. That’s right, Univision sat up and is paying attention.

Univision is traditionally very conservative. They never advertise, other than cross-advertising on their own properties, because they don’t have to. But if you look inside this month’s Portada Magazine, you’ll see a full page ad for Univision.com, positioning it as the biggest and best website for reaching Hispanic web users. A few pages over there’s an ad for Batanga saying basically the same thing.

Generally accepted economic wisdom is that as markets mature, they naturally consolidate and move toward a duopoly state, with two big players dominating the market (think Coke/Pepsi, or Microsoft/Google). For a long time, the Hispanic online market has been highly fragmented, with one big fish (Univision.com) and lots of little fish (everybody else). This market is by no means mature, and is probably more fragmented than ever, but at the same time, it’s natural for there to be a couple of big leaders in the market ,fighting it out. It seems that for now that battle will be between Batanga and Univision.com. It should be fun to watch. Stay tuned.

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