Broadcasters of all sizes realize streaming is their future.
Latino Alternative TV (LATV) started as an LA-based national cable network for music and culture in 2007. But to effectively reach its audience of younger, bicultural American Latinx people – and generate advertiser demand – it became clear that digital had to be a priority.
In 2019, Andres Palencia and Bruno Seros-Ulloa became co-executive directors of LATV, and one of their first agenda items was to hire people to build digital product and ad sales teams. LATV redesigned its website in 2020 and launched a streaming app called LATV+ in Q4 of last year with hopes that more reach would attract more advertisers.
LATV+ is available on iOS, Apple TV, Fire TV and Samsung.
So far, LATV says the strategy is working. In June, Comscore ranked the network in second place for nationwide reach and engagement of US Hispanic audiences (ahead of Univision). LATV claims to reach 19% of the American Hispanic and Latinx population across its full media footprint.
Digital ad revenue is quickly becoming the company’s biggest growth engine, Palencia told AdExchanger. As of May, LATV’s digital ad revenue was up 250% year over year, and the company expects it to surpass linear TV revenue by next year. Brands buying inventory across LATV include Sephora, Starbucks, P&G, Verizon and Chase.
Need for scale
LATV’s digital presence multiplied its available ad inventory.
Until recently, however, the company’s biggest challenge was delivering scale for advertisers.
That’s why it implemented an “aggressive user acquisition strategy,” Palencia said.
To appeal to advertisers, LATV segments its audience based on engagement and uses tags to track the types of content its users consume, such as webpages on its site about Afro-Latinx food and fashion or LGBTQ+ culture and music.
“We’re gathering data [for segmentation] based on content engagement,” said Xavier Rodriguez, head of digital and strategic partnerships, who joined the company in 2020 to help build its digital advertising business.
When users land on a webpage, for example, LATV prompts them with surveys, games or the opportunity to sign up for a newsletter. It then filters users who respond at least 60% of the time into audience segments based on a combination of these actions and their engagement with a particular content category. If a user in a segment stops engaging with LATV’s site for a month, the company removes them from that segment.
Advertisers can then target ads based on the audiences they want to reach and track campaign performance based on metrics such as session length, click-through rate, view-through rate and repeat visitors. Buyers can also retarget ads to the same users while they consume similar types of content across LATV’s digital footprint.
LATV also credits the growth of its streaming service to crosspollination with its website, where it promotes titles and prompts app downloads, Rodriguez said. Since LATV+ launched last year, it’s seen a 100% month-over-month growth in its audiences consuming streaming titles, which are on-demand versions of the content LATV runs on its TV network.
Partnering up
LATV also partners with other minority-owned publishers with audiences that have similar interests to widen the scale of its inventory for targeting and retargeting. One example is LA Taco, an online blog that mostly covers local food and news in the LA area.
To make sure those sites get a good amount of traffic, LATV’s in-house studio helps create video content for these partners, which in turn creates more places to serve ads.
If the company’s growth continues on its current path, Rodriguez said LATV would consider acquiring the partner sites that are helping it scale the most.
For now, LATV sells most of its inventory through direct deals, in part because it has to ensure ads are running in the right types of content for the right audience. Ensuring cultural relevance is why many minority-owned publishers prefer direct sales over programmatic. “Direct buys are delivering better-quality ads and quicker [revenue] growth right now,” Rodriguez said.
Still, LATV plans to increase the proportion of ads it sells programmatically for the sake of scale. Rodriguez said the company intends to start making more of its inventory available programmatically in 2024.
LATV has its own ad network for programmatic buys, established by its digital team, and its inventory is available in DSPs including The Trade Desk. Many of its advertisers also use DoubleVerify or Oracle’s moat to tag and verify ad placements.
LATV’s next order of business is launching free ad-supported TV (FAST) channels later this year using Amagi’s ad serving software.
Keeping up the pivot to a “digital-first mindset” is integral for future growth, Rodriguez said.
Editor’s note: This article has been edited to reflect updated Comscore numbers.
