• by September 15, 2000

By David Cotriss

Among topics being discussed at the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies' (AHAA, www.ahaa.org) Semi-Annual Conference in Newport Beach, CA, which concludes Sunday, is the unique thinking required when targeting the Hispanic population online. The conference, which is being webcast live at www.endigital.com/ahaa, focuses on how to use creativity to keep pace with the fast-growing Hispanic market but also addresses the role of language in developing advertising targeted toward the U.S. Hispanic population.

Joe Zubi, Executive VP of Zubi Advertising, a full-service Hispanic advertising agency in Miami, FL that has done work for major corporations including Ford, Mobil, American Airlines, and M&M Mars, lends some important and valuable insight into planning media geared toward Hispanics. He sees two major issues involved in targeting Hispanics: pricing consistency across sites, and a motivation to know the real value of impressions and page views.

"There's a need to focus on traditional mediums that work with Hispanics," says Zubi. "Online media is very critically evaluated for Hispanic planning." He notes that similar sales tools are used, and that there's a more limited number of portals to advertise on that are geared toward Hispanics. More of them tend to be upstart ventures with less proven track records. This creates a challenge when finding sites that narrowly target the Hispanic population. Some general content sites of this nature include Terra.com, StarMedia, and Yupi.com.

He notes that creative is similar, using familiar methods such as buttons, banners, and sponsorships. "Hispanic advertising tends to be simple," explains Zubi. "Much of it is text banners. Promotions and sponsorships are key -- they like to participate in local events." He says that some of the simplicity and offline efforts are due to their lower income generally and not being quite as tech-savvy as other cultures.

Zubi says that the English to Spanish language ratio is about 50:50, so it's important to offer both language options on sites. Depending on where they are running, ads should be in the appropriate language. On narrower sites Spanish is more likely to be used for ads, but generally English is used to reach a broader population base. He adds that about half of Hispanic households have computers, and a large portion of those have Internet access.

Given the challenges involved in targeting ethnic populations online, it's important to know the effectiveness of impressions and page views. Zubi is not familiar with technologies that address this for Hispanics specifically. Existing behavioral and demographic targeting and measurement techniques used on the Web may provide some insight here.

- MediaDailyNews staff reporter David Cotriss may be reached at dcotriss@mediapost.com