As the U.S. Hispanic population continues to grow and their cultures meld with Americans, marketing to that population goes beyond what language they speak.
"We sort of have to stop talking about language," said Lisa Torres, President, ZO Multicultural. "It's about culture, it's about insight and it's about content."
That came during the Advertising Roundtable at B&C/Multichannel's Hispanic TV Summit on Wednesday. The roundtable was moderated by Court Stroud, director of media partnerships at Skyword Inc.
"I think we're still a little too focused on language," Torres continued. "That causes confusion to our clients and to advertisers," she said focusing on that language actually makes it easier to leave the Hispanic market, since many U.S. Hispanics are bilingual, marketers think they are reaching them with major English-language programming.
"For us it really depends on what that ultimate passion point is, [sports, news, lifestyle]" said Eduardo G. Samamé, VP, new products & general manager, direct marketing solutions, Time Warner Cable Media. "It starts with content and ends with content."
Mike Rosen, executive VP, advertising sales & integrated marketing, Telemundo Media, added that it's foolish to view the Hispanic population as just a segment. "55 million people is not a segment," he said. "Hispanics are not a segment, [they're] an opportunity."
Tom Maney, executive VP of advertising sales at Fox Hispanic Media, said that he is noticing marketers are encompassing the Hispanic marketplace in their main budget, rather than have a completely separate one. "Marketers are now bringing it together and talking about 'how do we reach consumers.'"
Another topic that was hotly discussed during the roundtable was the effect that the second screen, primarily video on demand, was having on the marketplace.
"We do see on the VOD side that more and more content is being placed on the platform and the usage just continues to increase," said Carol Hinnant, senior VP, national television sales, Rentrak. "Its not minimizing the live TV, its actually growing the total audience"
However, Samamé admitted that they are still figuring out how VOD can best work with marketers. "We certainly embrace VOD, we are putting the technologies in place to enable dynamic ad insertion," he said. "Frankly, we're still playing with the ad payloads that are really optimal to the length of content that is out there."
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