• by Wayne Friedman , May 18, 2021

Univision Communications, the largest Spanish-language TV company in the U.S., told TV advertisers in its upfront presentation that there is a price to pay for not spending on Spanish-language TV.

“There are 1,500 major national brands out there that do not advertise in Spanish,” says Donna Speciale, president of advertising sales/marketing at Univision Communications

Referring to a new study with Nielsen, Speciale says: “It shows brands that did not spend actively in Spanish-language [TV] received, on average, a 39% lower return on ad spend than brands that did.”

She adds that these marketers' media plans aren’t working as hard as they should to drive business. “It means even if you are reaching Hispanics in English, you are not connecting with them.”

But Univision has been making progress -- especially since the first of the year, when Speciale took over the senior advertising position. Over 80 new brands have run campaigns on Univision this year.

In the presentation, Gonzalo del Fa, president of GroupM Multicultural, says that while 20% of the the U.S. population is Hispanic, less than 4% of marketing budgets are allocated toward this audience.

Speciale touted strong viewership results for its awards show “Premio Lo Nuestro,” the Mexican soccer league, Liga MX, and the Univision’s early evening news program, “Noticiero Univision.” The latter, she says, “delivers more Hispanic viewers than ABC, CBS, and NBC combined.”

As part of their upfront presentation -- and following up on its recent streaming platform launch of PrendeTV -- Univision said it will launch a free 24/7 news channel in early 2022 to air on PrendeTV. Only a month old, PrendeTV claims 1 million active users, trending to hit 5 million by the end of 2021.

In April, Univision announced it will acquire Mexico-City based Grupo Televisa’s free and payTV channels and production assets in a $4.8 billion deal.