81% of the 34 million online Hispanics prefer English or are bilingual. This reality coupled with the flood of advertising dollars that political campaigns will invest to sway the critical Latino vote make it an interesting time to look at English digital platforms that target Latinos.

Digital advertising tactics such as search, behavioral, re-targeting and contextual targeting have emerged to allow marketers to reach English preferring Hispanics, but they all require a relatively high level of expertise to execute. Today, brands looking to reach online Hispanics in English have another option thanks to English language digital platforms that target Latinos.

I took a quick look at the market of Latino themed, English language digital platforms and found that a couple of upstarts are challenging traditional media companies. I am sure that the competition to reach online Hispanics in English will heat up as a result of the following market dynamics.

• There are not that many players
• There is no clear leader
• Low barriers to entry provided by social media
• The ad dollars associated with the upcoming election
• The importance of the Latino vote

Below is a summary of some of the players targeting online Hispanics in English today.

The Upstarts

Two startups that had the foresight to cater to online Hispanics in English are Guanabee and Being Latino. Founded in 2006, Guanabee is a hip, Latino lifestyle and news site. Being Latino is just over two years old and pegs itself as an online magazine that that educates, entertains and connects Latinos.

Guanabee
o Website – 157,000 monthly visitors*
o Facebook – 2,500 likers
o Twitter – 2,300 followers

Being Latino
o Website – 11,000 monthly visitors*
o Facebook – 65,000 likers
o Twitter – 5,500 followers

Big Media

Several big media companies also are proactively targeting online Hispanics in English with digital platforms. These typically consist of a centralized website/blog supported by social media outlets. Of the bunch, NBC Universal’s Mun2 and MTV’s Tr3’s are the oldest and as a result have the most reach, here is how they all stack up.

Mun2
o Website – 150,000 monthly visitors*
o Facebook – 130,000 likers
o Twitter – 20,000 followers

MTV Tr3’s
o Website – 100,000 monthly visitors*
o Facebook – 65,000 likers
o Twitter – 48,000 followers

Fox News Latino
o Website - n/a*
o Facebook- 38,000 likers
o Twitter - 9,500 followers

Huffington Post – Latino Voices
o Website – n/a*
o Facebook – 2,500 likers
o Twitter– 4,200 followers

NBC Latino
o Tumblr Blog – n/a*
o Twitter – 200 followers

Univision News
o Tumblr Blog – 1,260 monthly visitors*
o Facebook – 2,000 likers
o Twitter– 29,000 followers

This quick analysis shows that upstarts are holding their own against big media when it comes to targeting online Hispanics in English. That said, it will be interesting to see who else enters the market and it is likely that those that can garner the lion’s share of election advertising dollars will emerge as the leaders next year.

I don’t know about you but I’m voting for the upstarts.

*Source: Compete.com

Here’s a question for online marketers: What percent of U.S. online advertising spending do you think is targeted to Hispanics?

Let me give you a couple of clues. The digital marketing site eMarketer expects U.S. online advertising spending to reach $31 billion in 2011. Hispanics make up about 15% of the total US online market.

15% would be too high, as many online Hispanics are bilingual and or prefer English, and general market online advertising reaches a large majority of them. So perhaps somewhere in the mid-single digits would make sense, say 5% or about $1.5 billion? If that was your guess, you would be way off. Industry figures peg US. Hispanic online advertising at only $200 million this year, a mere 0.65% of the total investment in US online advertising.

In the past ten years I have seen investment in the Hispanic online market grow, albeit at a much slower level than US online advertising in general. When you look at the numbers, the disparity between US online and Hispanic online investment is shocking.

So why is it that marketers spend less than 1% of their digital budgets against a group that represents 15% of the online market? Perhaps it is because most of the people that allocate digital marketing dollars are not Hispanic and they do not see or feel the Hispanic online market first hand. Maybe they don’t really think that Hispanics are online?

To invest in something you have to understand it

For years professionals in our industry have struggled to prove that Hispanics are online, sending research study after research study to anybody who would listen. After nearly a decade of countless PowerPoints, conference calls and meetings, we have made inroads, but still we have only gotten to 0.65% of the market. There has to be a better way.
As I was doing some research on the leading Hispanic Facebook pages it clicked. These large, colorful and engaged Hispanic Facebook communities are the digital equivalent of a Hispanic market immersion tour. These tours have been successfully used in Hispanic marketing for a while as they take non-Hispanic marketing executives into Hispanic neighborhoods so that they can see and feel the Hispanic market first hand, something a PowerPoint can never accomplish.
So I invite those who allocate digital marketing dollars on a Hispanic online market immersion tour to see and feel the Hispanic online market first hand. Spend five minutes checking out the top five Spanish Hispanic media and brand Facebook pages. Even if you don’t understand Spanish the sheer numbers, faces and engagement levels you will see will give you a real senses for the Hispanic online market.

1. http://www.facebook.com/univision 263,000 Likers
2. http://www.facebook.com/telemundo 150,000 Likers
3. http://www.facebook.com/peopleenespanol 107,000 Likers
4. http://www.facebook.com/statefarmlatino 103,000 Likers
5. http://www.facebook.com/vivemejor 101,000 Likers

I am hopeful that marketers will take me up on my invitation and see firsthand that Hispanics are online and worth much more than 0.65%.

When it comes to being healthy, Hispanics have several things going against them: language and cultural barriers, lack of access to preventive care and lack of health insurance. But there is another, lesser-known barrier that prevents them from living healthier lives: lack of online health information in Spanish.

Given the growth of the Hispanic online market, I thought I would take a look at how Hispanics use the Internet to educate themselves on health related matters and what content is available to them. What I found was that despite a strong demand for health content online among Hispanics, there is very little of it available in Spanish.

According to comScore, Hispanic usage of health care websites is growing twice as fast as the general market. In September 2011, a total of 17.2 million Hispanics visited a health related website; this represents 52% of all online Hispanics and an annual growth rate of 31%.

Compare this to the general market where 66% of online users visited a health site in September 2010 up 15% from the previous year. The fact that Hispanics are young helps explain why they are less likely than the general market to visit health sites, but language preference and the relative lack of Spanish language health information also seem to play a roll.
In the past twelve months, usage of health websites skyrocketed among the bilingual and Spanish preferring online Hispanics. As a result, more than half of all online Hispanics visits a health site each month. Take a look:

Growth in health site visitation by segment September 2010 – 2011
English Preferring: 25%
Bilingual: 47%
Spanish Preferring: 35%
All Hispanics: 32%

Percent of given segment that visited a health site in September 2011
English Preferring: 53%
Bilingual: 52%
Spanish Preferring: 51%
All Hispanics: 52%

So what sites do Hispanics visit when they are looking for health information? I found that they predominantly visit English language health websites. This is also true when we look only at the 5.7 million Bilingual and Spanish preferring online Hispanics that sought health information online in September 2011.

Most Popular Health Sites among Bilingual and Spanish Preferring Hispanics September 2011
Every Day Health Network 857,000 visitors
WebMD Health 565,000 visitors
WomensHealthBase.com 374,000 visitors
Livestrong –eHow Health 346,000 visitors
Health .com 265,000 visitors

When it comes to Spanish language health sites, we came across a relatively small number of properties that have relatively limited reach among Hispanics. We used Quantcast to gauge traffic because most of these sites are not currently tracked by comScore.

Most Popular Spanish Language Health Sites
VidaySalud.com 40,000 visitors
GeoSalud.com 34,000 visitors
Salud.Univision.com 24,600 visitors
HolaDoctor.com N/A
Medline Plus Español N/A
UnBuenDoctor.com N/A

This data should signal an opportunity to companies in the healthcare space. There is a clear demand for Spanish language health information online and relatively few companies providing it. Providing online Spanish health content would not only meet this demand, but it would also help Hispanics get healthy.

25 million Hispanics visit Facebook each month. That represents 74% of all online Hispanics. Given these figures, it is not surprising that countless brands and organizations use Facebook advertising to reach the nation’s largest minority group.
In this post, I’m going to share with you some of the insights I’ve gained firsthand by successfully targeting Hispanics on Facebook. Specifically, I’m going to show you how to use Facebook’s self-serve, cost per click based advertising platform called Marketplace.

Let’s assume we are trying to reach Spanish-preferring and bilingual Hispanics who are 18 years or older.

Define Objectives and Budget

It is imperative to first ask yourself what are you trying to accomplish and how will you measure success. Facebook advertising can be used to achieve several objectives, from branding and awareness, driving “likers” to a Facebook page, generating traffic to an external website or even direct response marketing. It is also important to set a budget and financial goals for the campaign and put the proper tracking in place to measure your success – that is, how much is your goal worth?

Establish a Target Audience

Facebook allows marketers to target audiences based on geographic, demographic, language and psychographic characteristics. Facebook’s targeting engine makes it easy and cost effective to reach various segments of the Hispanic online market.. Here are some simple targeting techniques you can use:

Location – Facebook allows marketers to target users on a national, state, city and zip code level. Location targeting give us immediate access to Hispanics as we know that certain DMA’s and zip codes have a high concentration of Hispanics from various countries of origin.

Demographics – Facebook allows us to target age and gender. We could choose younger cohorts in order to reach a large number of Hispanics, but for our campaign, let’s go with both men and women over 18.

Languages – Here is where it gets cool, Facebook advertising can be targeted to people in the United States who have chosen to use Facebook in Spanish. By selecting language = Spanish, we are able to reach almost 4 million Spanish-preferring Hispanics in the US.

Interests –Interest based targeting allows marketers to reach Facebook users based on the pages they like. This allows us to zero in on bilingual Hispanics, those that “like” Spanish language pages but use Facebook in English. Targeting those who use Facebook in English but like the pages of Spanish language media companies such as Univision, Telemundo, Televisa, CNN en Español and Azteca América yields an audience of nearly 700,000. If we add the Facebook pages of artists who predominantly cater to Latinos such as Wisin & Yandel, Don Omar, Ricardo Arjona, Juanes, Maná and Alejandro Fernandez, the audience grows to 1.2 million bilingual Hispanics.

Create Relevant Ads

Good ads are as important as targeting on Facebook. Facebook ads consist of a thumbnail image, a headline and a block of body copy. Make sure your ads are clear, compelling and call-to-action oriented. In our example above, we would use Spanish in the ads that would be targeted to the users who use Facebook in Spanish. For the bilingual group, we would likely test both Spanish and English ads. In terms of images, we have found that pictures of people tend to work best.

Launch and Optimize

Once you have defined your objectives, established your target audience and developed your ads, you are good to go, but once you launch your campaign you are only getting started. As with any online advertising tactic, Facebook advertising provides real time statistics on campaign performance. Be sure to monitor this closely and optimize your campaign to drive your objectives.

Having dedicated my career to the Hispanic online market, I am proud to be part of the National Dialogue on Improving Federal Websites. The Dialogue launched this week and is a two-week conversation meant to generate ideas for improving how the US Government communicates online. I have volunteered to be a discussion catalyst to help spark ideas on how the government can better serve Spanish preferring Hispanics and global audiences with limited English proficiency through the Internet.

What can you do to help?

1. Join the online conversation, submit ideas and vote on ideas that you think are worthwhile
2. Participate in a real-time discussion on the topic this Monday, September 26th at 1PM EST
3. Spread the word to your networks! You can use this link http://bit.ly/r764OI and if you use Twitter, the hash tag is #dotgov.

I look forward to your ideas and appreciate your help in making US Government websites better for US Hispanics.

Back in May I took a look at how Hispanics were embracing emerging social media platforms and Tumblr caught my eye. When Tumblr announced last week that they now support Spanish, I thought I would see how Tumblr had progressed in the past few months. What I found was impressive. Tumblr has grown exponentially among Hispanics and now represents a platform Hispanics online marketers should seriously consider.

A cross between a blogging platform and Twitter, Tumblr makes it easy to share content and interact with it. Today there are over 28 million Tumblr blogs. Through Tumblr’s intuitive “liking” and “re-blogging” features, users share photos, videos or articles with their followers, who then amplify the content by re-blogging it to their networks.

Hispanic usage of Tumblr continues to skyrocket

Back in May 2011, comScore reported that 787,000 Hispanics visited Tumblr, making up 9% of total US traffic. In July 2011, Hispanic visitors to Tumblr skyrocketed to 1.5 million or 11% of US traffic. In the past 12 months, Tumblr’s total US traffic grew 218% while Tumblr’s US Hispanic traffic grew 312%. To put things in perspective, take a look at how Tumblr stacks up from a Hispanic traffic perspective to some leading Spanish language sites.

1. Univision.com – 3.5 Million Hispanic visitors
2. Tumblr – 1.5 Million Hispanic visitors
3. MSN Latino – 1.5 Million Hispanic visitors
4. Terra.com – 740 Thousand Hispanic visitors
5. AOL Latino – 650 Thousand Hispanic visitors

When taking a closer look at Tumblr’s 1.5 million monthly Hispanic visitors we find that they are more likely to be female, have children, prefer English and be younger than the aggregate Hispanic online market. Here is a quick comparison of Tumblr’s Hispanic users compared to Hispanic online market in general.

Age 12-34
o Hispanic online market 47%
o Tumblr 77%
Female
o Hispanic online market 49%
o Tumblr 52%
Have Children
o Hispanic online market 63%
o Tumblr 70%
Prefer English
o Hispanic online market 54%
o Tumblr 59%

The opportunity is wide open

Despite these impressive statistics, I am not aware of any large brands or organizations (besides Univision News) that have leveraged Tumblr to reach Hispanics. I will be keeping my eye on Tumblr to see who takes advantage of this opportunity.

As a follow up a previous post post, Five Reasons for Using Spanish to Reach Hispanics Online, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the Hispanic e-commerce landscape given that few leading online retailers are proactively targeting Spanish preferring and bilingual online Hispanics. The results should be eye opening for online retailers.

According to comScore, in the past 12 months, the US Hispanic online market has grown significantly while the US general online market has actually declined.

US Online market growth by segment May 2010 – May 2011

• Non-Hispanic -2%
• Hispanic English 12%
• Hispanic Bilingual 21%
• Hispanic Spanish 17%

As Hispanics become more comfortable and trusting of the Internet, they will also explore retail websites to research and purchase products. In fact, this is already happening:

Retail websites traffic growth by segment May 2010 – May 2011

• Non-Hispanic 7%
• Hispanic English 22%
• Hispanic Bilingual 28%
• Hispanic Spanish 27%

So which online retailers are benefiting from this growth? I analyzed the five most visited retail sites and found that for three of them, Netflix.com, BestBuy.com and Walmart.com are taking advantage of the booming Hispanic online market. The other two, Amazon.com and Target.com, actually saw declines in overall traffic, including among Hispanics. Below I’ll try to explain what is taking place, but first let’s take a look at the data, which shows traffic growth by segment from May 2010 – May 2011 for each retailer:

Netflix.com

• Non-Hispanic 51%
• Hispanic English 36%
• Hispanic Bilingual 122%
• Hispanic Spanish 208%

Bestbuy.com

• Non-Hispanic 16%
• Hispanic English 37%
• Hispanic Bilingual 30%
• Hispanic Spanish 45%

WalMart.com

• Non-Hispanic -8%
• Hispanic English 12%
• Hispanic Bilingual 22%
• Hispanic Spanish 14%

Amazon.com

• Non-Hispanic -2%
• Hispanic English -6%
• Hispanic Bilingual 5%
• Hispanic Spanish -4%

Target.com

• Non-Hispanic -18%
• Hispanic English -17%
• Hispanic Bilingual -4%
• Hispanic Spanish -8%

The clear winner of this group is Netflix, which has experienced meteoric growth among Spanish preferring and bilingual Hispanics in the past year. Spanish preferring and bilingual online Hispanics are young and very likely to have kids representing a strong segment for Netflix. Although Netflix.com does not offer a Spanish language experience on its website, it did proactively target Hispanics via online advertising in the past year.

Next to Netflix, Bestbuy.com had a strong year across all Hispanic online market segments. Of the large online retailers, Best Buy is the only one to offer a complete Spanish language version of their website. They also draw traffic to the site through an integrated Spanish language marketing effort.

Rounding out the list of winners is Wal-Mart who posted gains in Hispanic visitors while non-Hispanic traffic declined. Walmart.com does offer Spanish content on its website through its “Ahorra más. Vive mejor campaign” and also markets aggressively in Spanish.

As for those sites that experienced declines in traffic?

Both Amazon.com and Target.com experienced drops in non-Hispanic traffic over the past twelve months, but it is surprising that they saw declines across most Hispanic online segments. Then again, neither offers a Spanish language experience and their site or executes a targeted Hispanic online advertising.

The data shows that online retailers should consider putting up a “Se habla español” sign.

In most cases I don’t think it makes sense to provide a complete Spanish language version of an e-commerce site, but targeted Hispanic advertising including social media, Spanish language customer support and relevant Spanish language content can go a long way in building relationships with online Hispanics.

Recognizing the importance of the Hispanic population in the United States, the FBI engaged Captura Group to develop and implement a Hispanic online strategy to achieve the following key objectives:

• Build awareness and trust for the FBI among US Hispanics
• Educate online Hispanics on how and when to contact the FBI
• Produce and distribute resources to educate Hispanics on common fraud and crimes

Hispanic Online Solution

To most efficiently achieve the objectives of the campaign, Captura Group worked with the FBI to develop a Hispanic online strategy that consisted of two main elements:

1. FBI Spanish Website: A Spanish language experience was created on FBI.gov by leveraging existing technology.

The landing page includes the following components:

Home page outlining the FBI’s mission, high level information about contacting the FBI and recent blog posts

Contact the FBI page that contains detailed instructions for contacting the FBI
Spanish language blog we used existing FBI content to develop a weekly

Spanish-language articles featuring tips on how to avoid common fraud and crimes

2. Hispanic Digital PR: We leveraged our Contenido Latino Hispanic content syndication platform to place Spanish-language FBI articles on leading Hispanics websites.

FBI Spanish-language article on Univision.com

Results

The FBI’s Hispanic online strategy was launched on January 20, 2011 and has proven to be extremely successful in achieving the objectives set forth above. To date, the Hispanic online strategy has driven the following results:

• 150,000 page views on the FBI’s Spanish website
• 24 Spanish language articles developed and published
• Over 200 placements of Spanish-language FBI articles on leading Hispanic websites including Univision.com, MSN Latino, AOL Latino, Terra.com and many others.

The release of the 2010 Census has re-ignited the debate about which language is best for reaching US Hispanics. With US born Hispanics now outnumbering foreign born Hispanics, the voices of proponents of using English are growing louder. Where do I stand in this debate, well it’s quite simple: Figure out the language preference of your target audience and use that language, be it English or Spanish.

When it comes to the Hispanic online market, most studies indicate that half of the 31 million Hispanics online prefer English while the other half prefers Spanish or are bilingual. Using common sense and some quantitative data from comScore, I came up with 5 reasons for using Spanish to reach online Hispanics.

1. Strong Market Dynamics – While the US online market has reached maturity, Spanish preferring and bilingual Hispanics are driving the growth in the US Hispanic online market. New Internet users represent an attractive target for marketers looking to make a good first impression. Take a look:

2. Less Competition – Today there are relatively few marketers proactively targeting the 14.6 million online Hispanics that prefer Spanish or are bilingual. Less competition means not only lower advertising costs on platforms such as Google and Facebook, but also higher engagement with a consumer that is not as bombarded by online advertising.

3. Favorable Demographics – When compared to English preferring online Hispanics, Hispanics who prefer Spanish or are bilingual fall into a sweet spot for marketers looking to reach consumers who are young, make more money and have a family:

4. Low Expectations – As I theorized in a previous post, most Hispanics expect Spanish-language online experiences to be poor. Marketers who provide high quality Spanish language online experiences will exceed expectations and make a favorable impression on this segment.

5. Using English is More Challenging- Targeting English preferring Hispanics online is more difficult and expensive than targeting Spanish speaking online Hispanics. In addition, marketers already investing in general market online campaigns are likely reaching English preferring online Hispanics.

At the end of the day, marketers looking to reach all online Hispanics need to use both English and Spanish. But if you had to choose between the two, I would start with Spanish. It just makes sense.

¿No crees?

There is no doubt that social media is firmly embedded into the fabric of Hispanic online culture. Since we first began studying Hispanic social media use in 2009, we have seen Hispanics lead the way when it comes to social media.

So it’s no surprise that mainstream social media sites Facebook and YouTube are now among the top five most popular websites among Hispanics and are growing at meteoritic rates, as shown by the data below are:

1. Yahoo.com
• 25M Hispanic visitors
• 80% Hispanic reach
• 35% Annual Hispanic growth

2. Google.com
• 24M Hispanic visitors
• 77% Hispanic reach
• 15% Annual Hispanic growth

3. Facebook.com
• 22M Hispanic visitors
• 70% Hispanic reach
• 125% Annual Hispanic growth

4. YouTube.com
• 18M Hispanic visitors
• 58% Hispanic reach
• 25% Annual Hispanic growth

5. MSN.com
• 18M Hispanic visitors
• 58% Hispanic reach
• 17% Annual Hispanic growth

But that’s only half story.

To better understand what’s next in Hispanic social media we took a look at some established and niche social networking sites. To put things in context, it is important to know that there are 32M Hispanics online, the Hispanic online market grew 13% from April 2010 –2011 and that Hispanics make up 14.5% of the total US Online market.

What we found suggests that in some cases Hispanics are starting to venture beyond Facebook and YouTube and joining smaller and more specialized social networking sites.

Hispanic usage of Twitter and LinkedIn

Well known social media players Twitter and LinkedIn have established a foothold in the Hispanic online market reaching nearly 3 million monthly Hispanic visitors each. Between the two it appears that LinkedIn is poised to grow faster as younger Latinos enter the workforce and migrate to the professional social network, as the data below suggests:

1. Twitter
• 3.2M Hispanic visitors
• 10% Hispanic reach
• 22% Annual Hispanic growth
• 13% Hispanic composition

2. LinkedIn
• 2.8M Hispanic visitors
• 9% Hispanic reach
• 53% Annual Hispanic growth
• 9% Hispanic composition

Hispanic usage of niche social networks

There is a clear opportunity for companies to capitalize on the diversification that’s occurring with Hispanic social media usage. Of the niche players, it seems Tumblr is making great strides. A hybrid between a blogging platform and Twitter, Tumblr “lets you effortlessly share anything”. Tumblr currently hosts over 18 million blogs and generates over 28 million posts per day. Hispanics are starting to flock to Tumblr and we expect to see organizations looking to reach them do the same.

Among other niche players, Badoo.com, a local focused social network, is resonating with Hispanics, while Plixi.com(now called Lockerz.com), a mobile photo sharing network, reached over 500,000 last month. QuePasa.com, one of the first Hispanic focused websites, seems to have faltered recently.

1. Tumblr
• 787K Hispanic Visitors
• 2.5% Hispanic reach
• 251% Annual Hispanic growth
• 9% Hispanic composition

2. Badoo
• 687K Hispanic visitors
• 2.2% Hispanic reach
• (2%)Annual Hispanic growth
• 70% Hispanic composition

2. Plixi
• 528K Hispanic visitors
• 1.7% Hispanic reach
• Plixi did not exist a year ago!
• 10% Hispanic composition

3. QuePasa
• 230K Hispanic visitors
• 1% Hispanic reach
• (17%) Hispanic annual growth
• 54% Hispanic composition

So what’s next in Hispanic social media?

Facebook will probably continue its supreme dominance, but when it comes to the future of social media and Hispanics, small might be the next big thing.

Souce of data: comScore Media Metrix