Hispanic Media companies woo advertisers, both at NewFronts and via acquisitions

A note on language: “Hispanic” refers to someone who comes from or has a background in a Spanish-speaking country. This article discusses Hispanic consumers who reside in the US.

The trend: Media entities are aiming to woo Hispanic consumers.

• TelevisaUnivision is acquiring Pantaya, the Spanish-language streaming platform, to expand its ad-supported video-on-demand (AVOD) ViX platform.
• At last week’s NewFronts, Canela Media, Estrella Media, and newcomer Nuestra.TV vied to show advertisers why they are safe destinations to place major ad buys.

ViX ascendant: Last month, TelevisaUnivision launched ViX, a combination of Univision’s PrendeTV and Televisa’s Blim TV.

• Pantaya had approximately 900,000 subscribers as of April 2021. Adding those users can help TelevisaUnivision with content for its ViX+ service.
• Consolidation of the market for specific demographics should allow TelevisaUnivision to charge more for ads.

Hispanic DEI: At last week’s IAB NewFronts, presentations focused on content for diverse audiences.

• Canela.TV’s upcoming content includes a docuseries on a perilous immigrant trip to the US to a reality dating show in which the "abuela" (grandmother) chooses her grandchild's mate. CEO Isabel Rafferty Zavala said the show illustrates that there is no such thing as a “generic” Hispanic viewer: “The Latin viewer comes in many flavors [including] Afro-Latinos, Hispanic Americans, immigrants, and many more.”
• Estrella Media’s offerings include its hit “Rica Famosa Latina,” though episodes will initially air on digital in Q3. The company’s “MasterChef Latinos” will return for a second season with a new digital-exclusive content series, and the “Tengo Talento, Mucho Talento” franchise will also feature exclusive digital material. René Santaella, chief of Estrella Digital and Streaming, expects streaming viewership to expand 25% this year, reaching 1.3 billion minutes of streaming a month.
• Adsmovil, a Hispanic mobile advertising and digital media firm, has launched Nuestra.TV, its first-ever ad-supported streaming video service aimed at “bicultural, bilingual" Hispanic viewers, including English and Spanish content from the US, Latin America, and Spain.

Zoom out: Increasingly, major streaming players understand that catering to Hispanic viewers makes business sense.

• Later this year, NBCUniversal’s Peacock is launching Tplus, a content hub aimed at Spanish-speaking audiences featuring existing and original Telemundo content. The content hub will be available at launch to premium-tier Peacock subscribers at no additional cost.

Behind the numbers: The US has 62 million Hispanic consumers with $2 trillion in purchasing power. On the whole, this group is leaving linear TV for streaming video, and appears to be over-indexing in their interest in ad-supported content.

• Hispanic viewers spend 34% of their viewing time on streaming, per Nielsen, compared with 25% of non-Hispanic whites.
• Hispanic audiences are avid smartphone users and spend more time streaming video than the population at large.
• Nearly four in five (78.8%) of the Hispanic population streams video content, representing the highest rate of digital video viewership among all racial and ethnic groups, per our forecast.

Analyst insight: The average household income of Hispanics is lower than the national average, notes senior analyst Jingqiu Ren. To tap into this market, Ren notes, pricing is important—and could explain why this group typically prefers AVOD options.

Why it matters: As streaming companies look for incremental growth, they inevitably spend more time on cohorts that have been underserved by marketing efforts to date—and the Hispanic consumer certainly fits that bill.