TelevisaUnivision says its youth award show, Premios Juventud, has been a hot ticket with marketers, selling out faster than ever before while registering a 23% increase in revenue, powered by eight new sponsors.
(Since this story was published, TelevisaUnivision said additional revenue has come in, raising the gain to 29%).
Premios Juventud will air live from Puerto Rico for the first time Thursday night on Univision..
The new brands sponsoring the award show are Doordash, Indeed, Kraft, Petsmart, Procter & Gamble’s Fabric Care and Gain products, Pfizer, Unilever and Netflix.
Coca-Cola, a sponsor for its sixth consecutive year, is doubling down on its investment around Premios Juventud. Last year it hosted a “back lot” featuring performance, food, and social media experiences. This year, with reduced COVID restrictions, Coke’s back lot experience has been expanded.
Other returning sponsors include Oreo, Sour Patch Kids, M&Ms. T-Mobile and McDonald’s.
More advertisers are seeing the value of Univision’s tentpole programming, particularly its music-focused events, Luis de la Parra, senior VP of partner solutions at TelevisaUnivision, told Broadcasting+Cable.
“Our youth award show is a big bash in the summer, the perfect time for brands to push their summer messages,” de la Parra said. That means launching movies, back-to-school, and repositioning brands in a way that’s relevant for young consumers.
Live events are particularly attractive to brands. Premios Juventud builds anticipation for weeks before it airs, compels viewers to tune in the night of the event, and resonates for weeks afterward with on demand content on Univision’s ViX streaming service and other platforms, he said.
The event is also multiplatform. While it gets a big audience on Univision, advertisers can also reach out to target GenZ and millennial consumers via social media.
Social media ad revenue for Premios Juventud was up 31% from last year, de la Parra said.
“Brands are really looking at us as a social media opportunity,” he said. “WE create snackable content where we can engage across all the Univision distribution channels, on either Instagram, Facebook, YouTube or Twitter. Once we get into the social media world, we can be very specific on who we target and how we program that messaging.”
For Coke, its involvement with Premios Juventud and its backlot reflects its “Real Magic” summer program. Coke will be able to entertain GenZ audiences, who will be able to meet and greet some of the show’s stars in a VIP-style experience. Before the live broadcast, major stars including Mau Y Ricky, Jessi and Roberto Hernandez will be performing at backlot stage and some of the key performances during the show will take place there.
Televisa Univision will be offering measurement from a variety of research companies in order to demonstrate the effectiveness of the event. “All of the big advertisers that do marketing in the show have some form of measurement going on throughout the entire experience, de la Parra said. “We work very closely with them to make sure that at the end of these campaigns, they can clearly understand the value that we brought to them.” ■
