An Internet Advertising Blog

Targeting Methods to Reach U.S. Hispanic Market

In a recent report from Pew Hispanic Center, U.S. Hispanics accounted for more than 50% of the U.S. population growth since 2000. An eMarketer report showed the Hispanic audience is more open than other groups to brand suggestions and advertising messages. For marketers in an unstable economy, this represents a tremendous opportunity.

Hispanic media investment overall—especially in television—has grown considerably, but the online ad segment remains under-indexed relative to general market online spending. How can you use the Web to reach this growing and receptive demographic?

As in targeting the general online market, no single method works best. Rafael Urbina, CEO of Batanga, offers good advice. “The most successful campaigns combine the right mix of tools to properly segment and reach their target… Context is just as important as the target. Not only should your messaging be culturally relevant, but so, too, the environments in which they are placed.”

Geo-Targeting
Geo-targeting (also known as IP targeting) to specific countries, states, or DMAs is useful to segment Hispanics from different countries of origin or to segment different countries across Latin America. Kristina Canada, Media Director at Media8, says, “This strategy helps us reach U.S. Hispanics via U.S. IP targeting on best-in-class Latin American Spanish-language sites. We also use it to reach key Latin American audiences on U.S. Spanish-language sites with substantial traffic coming from Latin America.”

Behavioral targeting
Behavioral targeting helps marketers reach large numbers of online consumers while aggregating consumer ad response data and optimizing results.

Gail Galuppo, CMO of Western Union, calls it “our most successful strategy for reaching online Hispanic consumers.” She adds, “We also use broad-reach and niche, country-of-origin news, video and sports sites to reach consumers who are likely to send money home.”

Contextual Targeting
Contextual targeting enables clients to place banner or text ads alongside relevant content. “We see a direct correlation between performance and a tight match between message and media environment,” says Marla Skiko, SVP at SMG Multicultural. The company uses contextual targeting to seek mothers exploring cooking/family/home entertaining content across multiple sites and channels. “We created a behavioral segmentation for ‘avid Latina chefs’ to reach Moms who… prepare more than the average number of meals per week at home to more closely match our message with our core intended user,” Skiko explained.

Search
Buying keywords in both English and Spanish helps reach English-dominant and Spanish-dominant U.S. Hispanics and facilitates switching between languages for those comfortable with both.

At ad:tech Chicago earlier this year, Google presented “AdWords and the U.S. Hispanic Market,” offering these tips:

• U.S. Hispanics search in both languages

• Try different creative in different DMAs

• Use a Spanish-language landing page for Spanish keywords just as you do for English-language keywords

• Include accented and unaccented keywords

• Experiment with Spanish variations of words from different parts of Latin America

• Use elements of Spanish and English in the same creative

Content Category Targeting
Just as marketers buy media in specific magazine categories or brands, they can also buy online media across specific content sites or types.

Marcelo Salup, VP Media and Strategic Planning, at Siboney USA likes this technique. “For Kingston Technology, we bought lots of computer sites (for the flash drives), and music sites (for the micro cards). But the most successful site ever was Universia.Net, a site aimed squarely at university students who needed the transportability of the flash drives and the absolute 100% integrity guarantee.”

Creative Re-Targeting
As an extension of behavioral targeting, creative re-targeting delivers a cookie to users who have been served an ad, typically on an ad network. Users are then retargeted with the same creative messaging as they travel across sites on the ad network.

Spanish-language Browser Targeting
Spanish-language browser targeting within ad networks reaches Spanish-dominant users who default their Internet browsers to their native language. Kristina Canada of Media8 found these users make up about 15% of the U.S. Hispanic online population.

Marketing Challenges Ahead
These targeting strategies provide incredible opportunities for marketers and agencies, but they also generate tremendous amounts of data, especially when used together. The agencies, publishers and technology companies that figure out how to manage the fountains of data will establish themselves as leaders, helping their clients make smarter, faster and more effective marketing plans.

- Original article was published on MediaPost Publications

-- Joseph Kutchera

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