Estrella Media said it launched Estrella Media Audience Solutions (EMAS), a new advertising sales group that will represent Estrella and other independently owned Spanish-language media companies with a combined reach of 21.5 million viewers.
Signed up already are Hemisphere Media Group and beIN Sports. By banding together under EMAS, smaller Spanish-language media companies can better compete with giants TelevisaUnivision and Comcast NBCUniversal’s Telemundo.
“We’ve taken all of the sales and marketing capabilities that we have within Estrella and we’ve partnered with other media companies that are independent and represent strong brands,” Steve Mandala, chief revenue and local media officer for Estrella Media, said. “By bringing them all together, we make it easier for marketers to reach an expanded audience with really terrific content.”
Mandala will lead the EMAS sales team, which will be the exclusive seller for all of the participating companies. Revenue will be split based on the inventory sold..
EMAS estimates that it will deliver 21.5 million unique viewers per month across national linear and national digital platforms. Mandala said he expects EMAS to add a few more media companies to its roster by the time it makes a video upfront presentation on May 9.
EMAS will do business with agencies and advertisers through direct sales and programmatically. Advertisers are welcome to buy inventory from one of the participating networks or all of them.
“We want to work in any way that an advertiser or agency wants to work with us,“ Mandala said. “We want to remove obstacles, not create them.”
EMAS is working with Nielsen to estimate its cross-platform reach. “We’ve developed our own method using Comscore data to try to understand and estimate” the combined networks’ digital and linear reach, he added.
Mandala said he expects more marketers to advertise on Spanish-language media. While the overall ad market has been weak “there’s been steady growth in Spanish with brands activating because they want to speak to this consumer.”
