Commentary
Reaching U.S. Hispanics On The 'Long Tail' Of Country-Of-Origin Sites
- by Joe Kutchera , Op-Ed Contributor, February 26, 2009
1. Weblogs SL Sites: Blog network with 30 sites based in Spain
2. Mundoanuncio: Classifieds site based in New York that serves Mexico, Argentina, and Guatemala
3. Adam4Adam.com: Gay men's site
4. MercadoLibre: Auction site serving nearly every country in Latin America owned by eBay
5. ParaChatPro.com: Chat provider, based in California, that powers e-commerce sites and content sites like Univision.com
6. Musica.com: A music site based in Spain
7. Grupo Prisa: Owner of El Pais, based in Spain, the largest Spanish-language newspaper in the world
8. IT&IS Siglo XXI: Network of four travel sites based in Spain
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9. Grupo Salinas: Owner of TV Azteca properties, based in Mexico City, with a presence in the U.S.
10. El Tiempo: Newspaper based in Colombia
Seven out of the ten are non-U.S. properties owned by Spanish, Mexican or Colombian based media companies. And two of the U.S.-based Web properties, while based in the U.S., serve Latin American or global markets. Huh? So what does this say about how we provide content and market to U.S. Hispanics?
Clearly, search has been the game changer in the "distribution" of media. Type in "viajes en latinoamerica" into your favorite search engine and you will be whisked away to a site based in Spain without even knowing that you've already left the country! And, according to the list above, the same is true of technology, classifieds, shopping/auction, music, news and celebrity content. Thomas Friedman was right, the world is flat.
Secondly, are U.S. based Spanish-language media companies providing (or, more accurately, not providing) the content that U.S. Hispanics seek? Evidently, U.S. Hispanics who prefer to read in Spanish leave our borders via search to read foreign sites for many niche subjects. Univision, Telemundo, Yahoo en español, Terra and company have competition: global publishers in Spanish.
How to explain this?
Eduardo Arcos, founder of the Spanish-language blog network Hipertextual, says, "This is no surprise for me. Hispanics don't care about where the site is from as long as they understand what they are reading or that they are interested in the information they find."
Alex Banks, managing director of Latin America for comScore, says, "The U.S. Hispanic audience does consume a significant amount of Spanish-language content online, with a large portion of this content often coming from foreign countries. Within comScore Media Metrix, we currently see that approximately 40% of El Pais' global audience, and about 25% of Marca's, comes from outside of Spain. Furthermore, for Televisa's sites, we see more than 50% of their global audience coming from outside of Mexico.
Banks attributes this to the increasing globalization of the Internet. "Over a period of a few minutes, an individual can visit their favorite news site in Colombia, watch video highlights of their favorite Brazilian soccer team's last game, and then wish their friend in Argentina a happy birthday via an international social network. At any moment, any individual can 'virtually' be anywhere they want to be thanks to the Internet."
Maria Lopez-Knowles, senior vice president at MRM/McCann Worldgroup, says "I would think that Hispanics do leave our borders to visit foreign sites. It's an opportunity for them to stay in touch with the activities of their homeland, catch up on national and local events and, in short, stay connected.
"The flattening of the world has made what was inaccessible, accessible. And it really speaks to the fact that it's not about 'either/or' anymore; it's about AND. You can be bilingual and bicultural, and straddle two worlds -- you don't have to pick one or the other."
How do you plan a media buy?
So, what are our options for reaching U.S. Hispanics on these foreign sites here within the U.S.? Planning a buy based upon these 10 top indexing sites would be very difficult since many of these sites do not have sales representation in the U.S. Yet, collectively they have significant reach with targeted, niche content. Also, how can marketers and agencies ensure that their ads are not placed alongside inappropriate content, such as the racy Adam4Adam site?
The major portals will sell you their domestic Hispanic audience, but as you can see from the comScore list, that audience is better found on mid- and long-tail sites, many of them not even based in the U.S. Ad exchanges can segment online ad inventory geographically by country, state or DMA (based upon the IP addresses) and some of them can apply the necessary content filters to ensure that your brand appears in a safe environment.
In conclusion, U.S. Hispanic consumers have changed the way they consume media. But have we changed the way we plan media campaigns for U.S. Hispanic consumers to reflect those changes? Or, are we taking advantage of the new media tools and vendors that reach U.S. Hispanics on country-of-origin sites?
Enjoyed your post Joe and you highlight a key challenge and opportunity in the US Hispanic online market. Today there is a relative lack of US based, culturally relevant content for Hispanics. As such, Hispanics are consuming content from around the world and in many cases creating their own on social networks.
Although leveraging foreign sites can be a powerful tactic for reaching US Hispanics, it is important to not only examine traffic patterns, but also consider the quality of a given site/network and the operational challenges that may creep up when dealing with foreign companies in different time zones.
Great point Sarah, Google makes it relatively easy to target these types of sites and cost effective!
Sarah and Lee - Thanks for your comments. In addition to the Google Content Network, there are a number of other ad exchanges and networks that can help you reach US Hispanics on country-of-origin sites including ADSDAQ, Right Media, Consorte, .FOX, and JUMBA. If anyone has found other effective means to target Hispanics using this method, I'd love to hear it.
Joe - as always, a great article. I wanted to post some points that I think will add to your commentary.
At Batanga, we own HispanoClick (soon to be rebranded) - a network now consistently reaching over 10 million US Hispanics each month. Our network is primarily - not entirely - composed of exactly the types of sites you're referring to above.
We focus on the quality of the sites we partner with, picking the highest grade content we can across a broad range of categories (news, sports, family, auto, food, entertainment, etc.) Working over the years with sites, we have become true partners with these publishers and help their business continue to grow, helping to extend the business of providing quality content to their audience in the US and inside their home countries.
Additionally, to the benefit our advertisers (and ultimately our publishing partners), we offer the ability to farther segment our composite audience through sophisticated targeting capabilities based in the areas of behavioral, contextual and re-targeting. A unique offering that will allow us to directly compete on a broader scale with the general market media companies that bring this capability to the broader community of agencies and clients.
What is distinguishing “winning”networks, across the board, is the ability to mount a solid reach story, and then offer these segmentation capabilities - bringing critical mass within a defined target audience.
The most interesting challenge in front of our network, yours, the other ones that are listed are these "general market" networks claiming they can reach US Hispanics. They claim through some loose association (sir name, traffic patterns, etc) they can deliver this audience, but it’s not a "pure" result.
As an example of the unsatisfactory practice being used by general market ad networks - since entering Hispanics media business just a few months ago, I'm now seeing Spanish language advertising on sites where I used to see English language ads along side English language content. And - with all due respect - I'm not Hispanic, simply because I follow the Barcelona Fotbal Club - doesn't qualify me to be Hispanic. So this is a wasted impression not only because it’s mistargeted, but also ineffective given the lesser quality environment (no relevant context, English language)
It is our networks (in a collective sense) that are delivering this audience in a cleaner, purer, and more direct way. It's our networks that to Lee's point, allow advertisers to reach the audience in-language, in-context. We all know that this is the most effective way for our clients to persuade their prospective customers in the US Hispanic universe to consider their brands/products.
In closing, i think collectively, we must all proactively promote exactly what you're saying in this piece and again to Lee's point emphasize that we are providing a unique, high-quality, high-reach, and effective environment for our advertisers.