Why is this happening?
"Search engines and social
networking are making it easier for [U.S. Hispanic] consumers to find and consume content outside of their home country," says Rafael Urbina, the CEO of Batanga. "As a result, country-specific
brands, such as newspaper domains, are generating a significant portion of their traffic outside of their home market."
"A large percentage of Hispanics visit sites from their country-of-origin, to be informed, to keep in touch, to keep up on what's going on in their countries and how that can affect their families," says Marta Martinez, the CEO of StarMedia.
Because of this trend, a number of ad networks have opened shop to serve the needs of advertisers looking to reach these Hispanics visiting foreign (mostly Latin American) web sites. In this article, I will answer a few questions about and then compare the leading ad networks that focus on the U.S. Hispanic market in the chart below.
Do Hispanics online care where web sites are
based?
"The reality is that the user is not very concerned with where the site is from. They are looking for content and services that are relevant," says Fernando Rodriguez, the CEO
of Terra. "U.S. Hispanics have very strong ethnic pride that translates into their interest for culturally relevant content. This means that they will visit sites from their country of origin, in
addition to some from other countries, including of course the U.S."
"Given that the Internet is a global medium, we believe the trend [of globalization] will continue for many years," says Urbina of Batanga. "The abundance of relevant international content will continue to attract U.S. Hispanics while content created for U.S. Hispanics will in turn attract those in Latin America and Spain."
What are the benefits of an online advertising network?
What are the benefits of working with a premium site?
And what are the drawbacks?
In the case of ad networks, the main minus is limited
transparency (depending upon the reporting of the ad network). Ideally, you want to ask for contextual and behavioral reports as well as reporting by site. "Being transparent allows the advertiser to
know exactly where their ads are running, at all times," says Martinez of StarMedia, which promotes itself as a completely transparent network.
In the case of premium sites, the drawbacks include higher CPM's and limited inventory as no single Hispanic site reaches more than 20% of the Hispanic audience online. In addition, it's harder to scale with individual sites because of the challenges in dealing with multiple points of contact.
While Yahoo en Español doesn't offer a network per se, according to Chris Emme, Yahoo represents eBay.com, Comcast.com, Walmart.com and ATT.com and can behaviorally target U.S. Hispanic users across those sites and Yahoo.com (in English).
What's ahead for Hispanic ad networks? Christopher Stanley, CEO and Founder of Alcance Media Group, says, "We have seen a significant number of requests from marketers and completed campaigns based on specific country of origin targeting." Stanley adds, "I do see an increase in the number of sites for specific countries such as Cuba or Venezuela that are being operated from the U.S."
Alcance | Batanga | EZ-Target/Terra | Orange/Star Media | Univision | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Number of sites | 125, including Mundo Sin Barreras, HOY, Café Magazine, Havana Journal, CIU San Francisco, Azteca, El Nuevo Herald, Diario de America | 312, including iHispano, Clarin.com, ElSalvador.com, Batanga, LaNaciion.com.ar, ElColombia .no, Cromos.com.co, elheraldo.hn, ElUniversal.com.co, LaRepublica.pe, LaVerdad.com | 100+, including AS.com,El Pais, Goal.com, CincoDias.com, DaddyYankee.com, Hola.com, GolTV.tv, Venevision.net, MissVenezuela.com | 20+, including starMedia, El Mundo, Marca Spil Games, The Weather Chanel en Español | 64, including Caracol TV, Revista Caras, Perfil.com, El Espectador, TyC Sports, Ambito Financiero | |
Unique Visitors | 8.3MM (server) | 14MM (ComScore) | 9.5MM (ComScore) | 2MM (ComScore) | 2MM (Quantcast) | |
Content Sponsorships | X | X | X | X | X | |
Geographic Targeting | X | X | X | X | X | |
Contextual Targeting | X | X | X | X | ||
Country-of-Origin | X | X | X | Only for email marketing | ||
Behavioral Targeting | X | X | X | |||
Browser, OS, or language | X | X | X | X | ||
Additional Services | Custom publisher recruitment, web design, outsourced ad operations for small/mid size agencies | Banner solutions such as in-banner videos, page push down and crawler units | Mobile development and ad serving solutions for publishers | Development of branded entertainment | Web site and mobile production |
I think the network model (having built out 24/7's in the late 90's) has legs, but its the shady media buying companies that are so prevalent in the marketplace that make it almost impossible to be sure what you are buying.
While at my previous agency, it tured out that our "branded network buys" were actually low CPM exchange buys, and we were paying for something we were not getting. We were being charged branded CPM values for remnant inventory, basicaly a blind buy.
The only way to avoid this, is to work with the groups that are open, (mostly public companies, not privately held) which tend to have a better record of honesty. This is sad because some small private companies are striving to make a difference, and in this article we see them, and we should support their efforts and grow partnerships that allow them to grow.
In closing - "let the buyer beware" is just as relevant today with network media buys, that I urge you to ask the right questions and hopefully find the right answers.
Have you visited tyloon.com ? it is a combination of a yellow pages and search engine with a multilingual tool, users/consumers can search 8 countries business platforms in different languages and merchants can create a multilingual business website within the platforms, Spanish included, I think is a great concept, since it opens more markets for merchants and is also like a combination of social media and business media, hope you try it.