Download Hispanics shine bright amid US television`s advertising gloom

March 24, 2015
Gross Impressions: 2,785,933
Hispanics shine bright amid US television’s
advertising gloom
March 24, 2015 at 9:06am
By Shannon Bond
The US television industry is at a turning point, as broadcasters and cable networks digest the first
evidence of what analysts say will be a long-term trend of slowing advertising sales and eroding audiences.
Spanish-language channels, however, are booming.
While many Americans shift from watching scheduled TV programmes when they air to selecting from a
growing range of on-demand and online services, Spanish-language networks are attracting ever more
viewers to real-time broadcasts of shows like the telenovela Mi Corazón es Tuyo, Liga MX football games
and La Voz Kids, a junior version of the singing competition The Voice.
Even as many advertisers shift money from TV budgets to digital platforms, this trend-bucking growth is
luring brands with an eye on America’s 56m Hispanics, whom Nielsen projects will wield $1.7tn in buying
power by 2019.
The divergence between Hispanic media and the broader TV market is accelerating at the very moment
that Univision, the largest Spanish-language broadcaster in the US, is preparing to pitch a $1bn initial
public offering to investors.
In the first two months of 2015, ad spending at private equity-owned Univision and Comcast’s Telemundo,
the two biggest Spanish-language broadcasters, rose 11 per cent, contrasting with a 12 per cent drop in
total TV ad bookings, according to Standard Media Index, which tracks 80 per cent of US media agency
spending.
Last year, ad expenditures on the top six Spanish broadcasters — Univision, Telemundo, MundoFox,
UniMas, Estrella TV and Azteca — rose 11 per cent, outpacing a 3 per cent gain for the biggest Englishlanguage broadcasters: CBS, ABC, NBC and Fox.
Univision sometimes beats English-language rivals among the sought-after audience of 18-49 year-olds in
a market where advertisers now talk of five big broadcast networks — ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and Univision.
“Univision, along with other networks in the Hispanic
media market, is serious competition for the Englishlanguage broadcast networks, and the SMI data highlight
that perhaps ad dollars are finally beginning to catch up to
ratings,” said Scott Grunther, SMI’s executive vicepresident of media.
Despite the recent acceleration, however, Hispanicfocused networks still lag behind English language channels
commercially. Last year, SMI calculates, Univision drew 16
per cent of the big five broadcasters’ 18-to-49-year-old
viewers — but it captured just 7 per cent of total ad
spending.
Several factors are driving more advertisers into the arms of Univision and its peers, industry executives
say.
The first is viewing habits among Hispanic audiences, who are less likely to record shows on DVRs or catch
up on streaming services like Netflix and Hulu — meaning they are more likely to see commercials.
During the 2013-14 TV season, 92 per cent of Univision’s viewers in the coveted 18-to-49-year-old
demographic watched its programming live, compared with percentages in the high-50s and low-60s at the
four big English-language broadcasters.
“Whether it’s sports or telenovelas [nightly soap operas] that you can’t delay viewing because you’ll miss
out the next night, we really sell the value of a live audience,” said Keith Turner, Univision’s president of
sales and marketing.
Univision got a big boost last year from its rights to air the World Cup: the network recorded a 34 per cent
jump in viewership from the 2010 tournament, according to SMI. But even stripping out lucrative footballrelated advertising, Univision says its ad growth significantly outpaced the industry.
Even outside of sports and telenovelas, Hispanic households spend less time than the US average watching
time-shifted TV and streaming programmes, according to Nielsen. That may in part be due to technological
barriers: Hispanics account for 13 per cent of US homes with a TV, but 18 per cent of homes without
broadband, pointing to less access to new internet-based TV services from media companies
including HBO, Dish Network and Sony.
Satellite provider Dish Network was, in fact, the biggest ad spender on the top Spanish-language channels
last year, according to Kantar Media, highlighting how media groups see an opportunity to increase pay-TV
subscriptions among Hispanics — even as the industry contracts among the broader US population.
Demographics
trends
are
another
attraction
to
advertisers. The median age of the US Hispanic consumer
is 27, younger than that for the white, black and AsianAmerican populations. They make up more than a fifth of
the millennial generation, which will pass the baby
boomers to become the largest US population cohort this
year.
Hispanic-focused media companies are also benefiting
from advertisers’ desire to more precisely target their TV
campaigns to make sure their messages reach the intended
viewers.
“As the Hispanic market gets bigger, we’re seeing slices of
the market that are underserved by existing media options
are now big enough to merit their own programming,” said Alan Sokol, chief executive of Hemisphere
Media, whose cable channels target the largest Hispanic groups in the US after Mexicans: Puerto Ricans,
Central Americans and Dominicans.
An airline that wants to promote flights to the Caribbean can find a receptive audience on Hemisphere’s
WAPA Americas, aimed at Puerto Ricans — and at a lower price than on a big broadcast network, he said.
“Our pitch [to agencies] is: you are doing your clients a disservice not to allocate [budgets] to us because
we are much more efficient.”