ContextWeb Now Speaks Spanish
We are proud to announce that ContextWeb now speaks Spanish! Read the MEDIAWEEK article here.
In addition to offering advertisers and agencies our English-language category and keyword contextual targeting within our exchange, we can now direct clients’ banner ads to Spanish-language categories and keywords. As Director of Spanish-Language markets for ContextWeb, I will be responsible for bringing this product to market, working with our U.S. sales team in building relationships with U.S. Hispanic ad agencies and marketers, opening a sales office in Mexico City and building revenue across Latin America. You can read more about me on iMedia.
Let’s take a look at the growth opportunity that Spanish-Language markets offer to marketers and publishers. With 332 million native speakers globally, Spanish is second most spoken native language behind Mandarin and ahead of English. (That’s not including people who speak English as a second language). In terms of Internet users, Spanish is the 3rd most used language on the Internet with 124 million users after English and Mandarin and ahead of Japanese and French. What makes Spanish-language markets really interesting is that while the Internet penetration rate in Latin America is quite low (25% in Mexico for example), as computer and cell phone prices continue to fall, Internet media consumption and advertising will grow much faster in Latin America than in established markets like the U.S. and Europe.
How about in the United States? There are 30 million U.S. Hispanics, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, so Spanish-language marketing efforts are a great way to expand domestically. According to eMarketer’s new study “U.S. Hispanic Media Usage,” 52% of U.S. Hispanics are online or about 23 million consumers.
And why are we opening an office in Mexico? With Mexico’s online advertising market growing at 100% per year (IAB Mexico/PWC 2007 study), it is growing four to five times as quickly as the U.S. online advertising market. Secondly, with the vast majority of Hispanics (67%) being of Mexican origin, many Mexican-Americans visit sites from their own country to get the latest news and gossip. So, signing up Mexican publishers is a key part of building our network/exchange by helping marketers target Hispanics online more effectively - through country-of-origin sites.
Please feel free to comment here with your questions or email me directly at jkutchera[at]contextweb.com. And in the meantime, please check out the following resources about America’s fastest growing demographic, U.S. Hispanics, and the emerging markets of Latin America.
Helpful Resources
- Ad Age’s Hispanic Fast Pact
- MRM Worldwide’s white paper, “The Online U.S. Hispanic: First and Second Generation Insights,” - Click on the 7th link
- eMarketer’s “US Hispanic Media Usage,” August, 2008
- The Hispanic Media Puzzle
- Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies
Helpful international resources (You’ll need to speak Spanish for these)
- AMIPCI - Mexican Internet Association
- IAB Argentina
- IAB Mexico
- IAB Spain
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