Most programmatic ad campaigns targeted to Latinos focus narrowly on Spanish-language content or Latino-focused media channels like Univision.
This approach excludes a massive untapped audience of bilingual Latino Americans who engage with content that brands don’t typically associate with this demographic, said Rene Alegria, president and CEO of Mundo Hispano Digital, parent company of bilingual news and entertainment site MundoNow.com.
On Tuesday, MundoNow announced a new audience extension initiative to address this problem together with Infinity Partnerships, an ad network that provides monetization services for minority-focused media orgs. TV Insider, PinkNews, LoveToKnow Media, Recurrent Ventures and Big Edition have signed on as publisher partners.
The initiative, called the MundoNow Project, places an ad unit on publisher sites that are popular with Latino audiences. This ad unit includes syndicated content from MundoNow, which appears alongside a video player provided by AdGrid that supports display units and pre-roll video.
MundoNow benefits by increasing the audience scale it can offer advertisers. In exchange, its partners get a rev share from ad sales.
Yesterday’s narrative
Alegria acquired Mundo Hispano from Cox Media in 2018, in partnership with former Georgia state senator Sam Zamarripa and Marcos Gonzalez, managing partner of Latino-focused VC fund VamosVentures.
“I’ve always thought of doing some type of network,” Alegria said, “but if we groupedtogether other Spanish-language platforms, that would be feeding into yesterday’s narrative.”
Alegria’s ambition is to transform MundoNow to better serve the bilingual Latino population in the US by creating a network that speaks to his own experience consuming media as a second-generation Latino American.
“There are a lot of networks out there that purport to be Latino networks, but 95% of their partners are Spanish-language newspapers,” he said. “That wasn’t my gig growing up in Arizona and that’s not where English-speaking Latinos in Omaha or upstate New York are going.”
These audiences don’t solely consume Spanish-language media. They’re also likely seeking entertainment news on TV Insider, reading home improvement tips on Recurrent’s BobVila.com or turning to translation services on sites like LoveToKnow Media’s YourDictionary to help them better communicate with their bilingual peers.
The problem is, none of this inventory would show up in a typical programmatic deal targeting Latino audiences.
“To categorize all Latinos as ‘Spanish language’ misses the mark, and that’s what the project is seeking to correct,” said Jonathan Penn, head of programmatic sales and agency development at Recurrent Ventures. “Through this publisher-first initiative, they’re filling a huge gap in the current multicultural ad tech ecosystem.”
The network approach
By pooling their inventory with MundoNow, publisher partners get access to demand from advertisers looking to target Latinos but who might not have considered advertising on those sites.
For example, Task & Purpose, Recurrent’s military-focused site, and its outdoor-focused brand, Field & Stream, attract strong Latino audiences, Penn said. But neither would be at the top of the list when marketers think of media properties that appeal to Latinos.
Across its partner network, MundoNow can reach tens of millions of Latino Americans on sites that aren’t available through similar Latino-focused ad networks, according to Alegria.
The network approach also makes it easier for brands to target niche markets in the Latino community, such as LGBTQ Latinos, whose interests are typically underrepresented in mainstream Spanish-language publications, but who are specifically catered to by publications like PinkNews, Alegria added.
But how do publishers prove they’re actually reaching Latinos? Mostly through a mix of first-party data and third-party verification, Penn said.
“We can do audience-based targeting using the brand’s data on their side or we have the capability of using our first-party data and our DMP,” he said. “And then we can identify through third-party verification where those users are coming from and how to target specific communities.”
Infinity Partnerships, which is responsible for recruiting publisher partners for the initiative, also provides consulting services and access to its own contextual and audience data to help publishers determine which content resonates with Latino visitors.
A greater share of bigger budgets
The MundoNow Project is still in its early stages, so it’s too soon to talk results. But it’s similar to another project that Infinity launched alongside EBONY in January to connect advertisers with Black audiences.
LoveToKnow Media participated in the EBONY Alliance, and the success of that partnership precipitated its involvement with the MundoNow Project.
“We’ve been running with EBONY for about six or seven months now, and they have more than doubled their spend with us each month,” said Andrea Cassidy Rego, senior director of programmatic operations at LoveToKnow Media. “And when they have new ad budgets, they’re coming to us and asking us to increase our daily cap and adjust the CPMs accordingly.”
As the EBONY example illustrates, this kind of partnership can help publishers capture a greater share of the budgets that brands are allocating to minority-owned and minority-focused publications and media orgs.
“Diversity, equity and inclusion budgets are increasing, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the inventory is available,” Recurrent’s Penn said. “Infinity Partnerships provides that connective tissue to help create these opportunities.”
