Research: Only 19.1% of U.S. Hispanics are Facebook Users, The Numbers

In today’s research piece we came upon interesting data:  Facebook’s reach among U.S. Hispanics is smaller than one would suspect.

There are 8.5 million U.S. Hispanic Facebook users, according to the company.if we take into account that the total Hispanic population has approximately 44 million, Facebook’s penetration in the U.S. Hispanic market lies at 19.1% (according to the last census count the figure is actually closer to 50 million Hispanics).

This is a similar ratio to Facebook’s penetration in Brazil,  where it has 19.8% penetration. However it has to be taken into account that Brazil’s social networking leader is Google’s Orkut and not Facebook. Facebook’s penetration among Argentinians 47% more than twice the U.S. Hispanic figure.

Millions of Latino users on Facebook

By using Facebook’s advertising segmentation tools, we were able to identify the number of users on the social network by country.  The graph below outlines the most important countries in the region.  For example, Brazil has the largest number of users, but not the highest percentage of social network penetration for Facebook (which is higher in several of the other countries).

LATINO POPULATION ON FACEBOOK, BY COUNTRY

The numbers by country give us a good indication of how this social network has permeated each of these countries, but the pan-regional advertising efforts of various brands are focused not so much on entire countries, but rather specific cities.

With this in mind, we measured the Facebook population of 10 major cities in Latin America. Surprisingly, the fourth most populous country on Facebook – Colombia – is first in the rankings by city, thanks to Bogota (where according to data from Facebook itself, the penetration rate is very high).

LATINO POPULATION ON FACEBOOK, BY CITIES

Facebook segmentation in Latin America: how to reach specific customers

Cost per click options are priced at approximately $0.20 and cost per thousand impressions are priced at around $0.15 (bid suggested by Facebook); although the final cost may be much lower if there is not much competition within the selected population.

The main segmentation that can be achieved is by age, as we can see in the following population chart for Latin America. If we add up all young people ages 13 (minors) to 35 (young adults), they comprise about 80% of all Latinos on Facebook.

LATINO POPULATION ON FACEBOOK, BY AGE

Another interesting segment is smartphone devices, as they not only allow us to address a specific type of mobile user, but also analyze which platforms are most commonly used today in Latin America.

LATINO POPOLATION ON FACEBOOK, BY DEVICE

Finally, the large amount of information that users themselves provide on Facebook is available for use by brands who want to target a specific user. At Portada, we chose 10 interests to show user behavior in all of Latin America, but many more can be found inside the social network.

LATINO POLULATION ON FACEBOOK, BY INTERESTS