• by Jose Villa , Columnist, September 18, 2017

The annual “Ad Age Hispanic Fact Pack” just came out and it provides an interesting snapshot of the Hispanic market in the United States. Aside from celebrating the best Hispanic advertising work and the top players in the industry, there are always thought-provoking nuggets of data that provide deeper insights into trends in the Hispanic marketplace. I’ve culled eight themes from the report that should provide some stimulating insights for all marketers:

Long-Awaited Shift to Hispanic Digital Media Spend Is Here

Hispanic media spend is finally shifting to digital advertising which was up 17% to $2 billion. Considering total Hispanic digital ad spend is notoriously under-measured, it’s clear that the shift to Hispanic digital media has arrived. 

Notable New Advertisers 

A few notable advertisers cracked the top 50 Hispanic ad spend list, including Unilever, Freeway Insurance and Novo Nordisk. Novo Nordisk is particularly interesting, as pharma has not historically invested in Hispanic media in a sustained way. It will be curious to see if Novo Nordisk continues its investment in 2017 and if any other pharma giants make the list next year.

Hispanic Media Preferences Continue Shift towards English (Particularly Online)

While there is a lot of angst in the Hispanic ad world about the importance of Spanish language media, the data on Hispanic media preferences is clear. Less than 30% of Hispanics are consuming most or all their TV and radio in Spanish. The online preference for English language media by Hispanics is particularly pronounced with 44.4% of Hispanics only consuming English media online and 63% consuming only or mostly English content online.

Hispanic Population Concentration in California

California is a massive economy unto itself. This is also the case when it comes to the Hispanic market. The Hispanic population in California is massive. There are approximately 15 million Hispanics in California overall and 3.1 million Hispanics are concentrated in four California markets representing 21% of the entire U.S. Hispanic population.

A New Big Three in the Hispanic Market?

The L.A.-New York–Miami triumvirate of the Hispanic market might soon be changing. Houston is creeping up on Miami as the third-largest Hispanic DMA with only about 100,000 fewer TV households than Miami.

Google and Facebook Dominate Hispanic Digital

As David Chitel mentioned in his recent post, Google and Facebook have become the new Univision-Telemundo of Hispanic digital media. They are clearly gaining the most from the trend towards digital media spend in the Hispanic market, and are leveraging their massive reach to establish themselves as the future duopoly of Hispanic media.

Hispanic Digital Long-Tail

Hispanic-targeted digital properties — web platforms focused strictly on the Hispanic market — have fallen off the map — with the 10 largest properties only reaching 12 million of the 35 million online Hispanics. That less than one third of the Hispanic online population reached by targeted Hispanic-specific digital properties.

Hispanic TV Viewership Keeps Dropping

Hispanic TV network viewership continues to decline, with top Hispanic networks like Univision steadily reaching fewer and fewer Hispanics. Since 2015, Univision’s primetime broadcasts have gone from reaching 2.2 million Hispanics to fewer than 1.6 million in 2017 (Hispanic Persons live +7). This remains a major issue for an industry driven by Spanish TV advertising.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated with more information in the final paragraph.