Nielsen, Univision Unveil Measurement Tool For Hispanic Market

 By: Jeff Myhre, Chief Editor (4/16/2008) 

The growing Spanish-speaking population in the US and the rise of incomes in Latin America over the last decade or so has created a valuable market that Anglophone advertisers have had trouble understanding and engaging.  To help with this, and to shift advertising dollars into Spanish language media, Univision Communications Inc. and Nielsen created Nielsen Fusion, which unites viewing data from Nielsen Media Research and product-purchase data from Nielsen Homescan, allowing marketers to effect their strategy for maximum return.  And it will be available for this Upfront, meaning ad rates may well be affected.

Nielsen Fusion offer insights that a monolingual market analysis just isn’t going to show.  As Univision put it “Fusion enables advertisers to go beyond the traditional targets of age and sex and tackle the matter from a better perspective - the actual marketing target.”  Suppose you want to sell cola in Los Angeles.  If you make a 100% English language buy, you’re not getting bang for the buck.  But if you knew that 40% of your target market (hard core cola buyers) was primarily Spanish speaking, you could fine tune your buy shifting money around with some confidence that it wasn’t just a shot in the dark..

Univision improved its case by releasing some proprietary data that shows just how big a deal Spanish language advertising is to that 16-24 year old demographic that primarily speaks Spanish.  “78% watch Univision because it has their favorite show; 71% say that ads in Spanish demonstrate respect for their language; 56% say that ads in Spanish make them feel recognized.  73% watch commercials on Spanish-language TV compared to 33% who watch commercials on English-language TV; 41% of non-Hispanic 16-24 year olds who watch English-language television watch the commercials.”

And although the writers’ strike had something to do with it, in February’s sweeps, Univision proudly points out that it was ranked fourth among US TV networks, beating out CBS and CW among adults 18-34.

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