Is content targeting acculturated Latinas good enough? Hispanic Media Buyers answer

The jury about the viability/success of sites targeting Hispanic (women) in English is still out (e.g. see the recent closures of CNN Latino and NBC Latino). Portada asked  media buyers at corporations and agencies about their views. What media buyers at Maybelline, Rooms to Go and Haworth Marketing and Media have to say.

Moguldom Media Group just introduced LatinaMadre.com a bicultural site targeting acculturated Hispanic moms. The rationale for the launch  seems pretty understandable when explained by Moguldom Media Group Chief Revenue Officer Christian Gonzalez: “There is a lack of information  for US-based Latinos/Hispanics,  but more so in the useful/factual information arena – Information people can use in their day-to-day lives. As far as LatinaMadre.com is concerned, we have a fair amount of content targeting Hispanic women.”

Quite a few media properties have been betting on reaching and engaging acculturated Hispanic moms. Demographic facts support  their efforts: Hispanic women are the growth engine of the U.S. female population and are expected to represent 30% of the total female population by 2060, while the non-Hispanic white female population is expected to drop to 43% according to a recent Nielsen study. But what do media buyers have to say? Are acculturated sites reaching the Latino population good enough? Is English-language  content targeting Hispanics still too scarce?

Daisy Terrazas-Cole, is  a Multicultural Media Strategist working at Haworth Marketing and Media in Minneapolis, MN. Terrazas-Cole works on the multicultural strategy for Target whose main objective is to reach bilingual Hispanic women  that are milennials and navigate between both cultures. Terrazas-Cole notes that some sites do a good job, including some Spanish-language sites who provide international news and sites targeting the general market in “pure” English,  but that “there seems to be a big gap when it comes to content targeting the bicultural Latina.”
Daniel Villaroel, Director Multiethnic Marketing at Maybelline New York and Garnier, says that “for the general market, there continues to be a growth trajectory for digital content. In comparison to the Hispanic market, some content produced in English is meeting the needs of some Latinas.  However, I think more content that’s of better quality is necessary for Latinas in both English and Spanish. I’m seeing a huge appetite for Spanish language/bilingual content.” (BTW: the data on the table at the end of this article supports Villaroel’s view). He adds that his brands “have fully robust Spanish language web and mobile sites.  We utilize a variety of tools at our disposal to reach Latinas digitally that include standard display, branded content and video among other tactics.”

Martha Kruse, Senior Director Multicultural Marketing at Rooms to Go, notes that “there is a good amount of media content targeting women in my opinion. Depending on the category you can find from well-established publishing house to bloggers, etc. Now, in turn when it comes to targeting Hispanic women, digitally, I think no one owns it yet.”

The costly need to update

“When it comes to digital media reaching out to the bicultural Latina, very few sites update their content often enough, particularly if you compare it to general market sites,” says Haworth’s Terrazas-Cole. It is a Catch 22 issue: If digital properties do not have enough good quality and frequently updated content they may not attract enough advertising dollars, which in turn are not sufficient to finance the editorial operation. Enedina Vega-Amaez ,Vice President/Publisher at Meredith Hispanic Ventures Group, contends that frequent updating  “is a question of resources and having the staff necessary to respond to what is current and trending since the web is so immediate.  In the magazine publishing world you are publishing for a monthly or a weekly, on the web it’s daily, if not hourly.”

The table below shows that English-language (general market)  sites in the beauty, lifestyle, fashion and style categories  are most visited by Hispanic women rather than sites that specifically target acculturated Latinas. It will be interesting to see if in the next 10 years this pecking order can be changed by new start-ups within media that exclusively targets acculturated Latinos.

General Market sites  lead when it comes to target acculturated Latinas

Source: comScore – December 2013