Investing in multicultural audiences is about more than simply a purpose-based approach.
Hispanic people now make up roughly 20% of the US population and 25% of American youth. Overall, they have tremendous purchase power in the US: $2.6 trillion by 2025, according to Insider Intelligence. But ad spend to reach them lags far behind the consumer potential. Preconceived notions – for example, that Hispanic households have lower incomes – partly explain why spend in certain verticals like financial services is sorely lacking.
But the problem expands far beyond stereotypes. Reaching multicultural audiences, especially in another language, is expensive, and the measurement data to justify the ad spend is insufficient.
When it comes to the importance of reaching Hispanic audiences, “major national advertisers still don’t get it,” says Dan Aversano, SVP of data, analytics and advanced advertising at TelevisaUnivision, on this week’s episode of AdExchanger Talks.
Third-party data sets miss an average of four in 10 US Hispanics, according to data analytics company Truthset, which TelevisaUnivision used to build its Hispanic household graph.
So, what’s to be done?
Media companies need to make more of their audience and viewership data available. TelevisaUnivision is one of a few programmers that serves primarily Hispanic viewers, and if it opens its data to measurement companies, it could help right-size TV ratings.
The company is “more willing than ever before to connect our data in a privacy-safe way,” Aversano says. The programmer is part of the recent broadcast joint industry committee, for example, which collaborates with publisher clean rooms to create measurement standards.
In the meantime, there’s still a lucrative opportunity to reach and resonate with Hispanic audiences in verticals that “don’t have a lot of clutter right now” in terms of competition, he adds, such as pharma.
Hispanic representation in data is not an easy problem to solve, but it’s time to “actually roll up our sleeves and do the work,” Aversano says. Besides, it’s good for business.
Also in this episode: Why measuring multilingual audiences is expensive, the industry’s path to alternative currencies and the pros and cons of panels.
For more articles featuring Dan Aversano, click here.
