Online Growth and Defining the Opportunity

Mediaweek wrote a piece about Hispanics online based on a new report from eMarketer.  The report states that 52 percent of Hispanics are now online-- 23 million users-- beating out projections that only 20 million would be online by the end of the decade.  Driving the growth, much like anything else in the demographic, are youth and U.S. borns.  Marketers are paying closer attention to reaching connected Hispanics in what now seems to be an important 4th element of any media approach.  For PR, online media is now just another form of reaching Hispanics, and in the same ranks as TV, print and radio.  But as such, it requires the same precision, the same targeting and the same degree of careful study that makes any pitch or campaign earn their place in other Hispanic media. 

According to the new edition of AdAge's Hispanic Fact Pack, 30 percent of Hispanics spend more than 13 hours online each week.  That metric alone does not tell a story: many could be clocking in the hours at work, for example.  So what we need to know is which sites Hispanics gravitate to and why, who is the user and what intrigues them.  The Fact Pack also includes three top ten lists about top web properties among Hispanics: English preferred's top 10, Spanish top 10s and top 10 among all users. Then, there is the top 10 Hispanic websites lists. When looking at the content, while Univision.com, Yahoo Telemundo, Terra and search engines like Google pull a large base of Hispanics online, many also are navigating sites written in Spanish and developed outside of the U.S..  Now, from the standpoint of reaching out through a marketing campaign, those need to be weeded, since they don't contribute much to domestic marketers. Also, Hispanics online consume English media too and many sites are available to them in the language.  In all, the web is rich with options and Hispanics online know this.  So how do we break through?

When developing a campaign online, we've found three recurring checklist items to keep in mind:
-- Do you have content for Hispanics online such as a website, sections, sitelet, etc?
-- Do you have a specific segment in mind?  Biculturals vs. recent arrivals, for example, moms vs. youth?
-- What is the personality of your brand and which media tends to best complement it?

These can well translate into how we'd approach programs in any other media and start to help define the best approach for getting to the right audience on the www.