Hispanic Portals Reach Out to Advertisers

Several top online media portals have teamed to launch a multi-media trade campaign promoting online advertising as a way to reach Hispanic consumers.

Participating media companies, all members of the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s (IAB) Hispanic Committee, include AOL Latino, MSN Latino, Yahoo en Espanol, Terra Networks and Univision.com.

Publicis Groupe agencies Tapestry and Starcom IP will lead the online efforts, providing strategic and tactical contact direction. Lapiz will provide creative services.

Hispanics represent a fast-growing portion of the overall online audience, according to comScore Media Metrix and Nielsen//NetRatings, who both offer Hispanic Web measurement services. In January 2005, comScore reported 13.8 million active U.S. Hispanics online with 24 year-old and younger consumers accounting for 49 percent of the total online audience. Only 30 percent of consumers within the general online population fall into that age group.

Work on the campaign will commence immediately, and is expected to launch with online, print and direct response media in the second half of 2005. Publicis won the account after a formal agency review, and will complete the work on a pro bono basis.

“This project demanded an agency that deeply understands the online marketplace, the nuances of trade marketing and the Hispanic audience,” said Liz Sarachek, chair of the IAB Hispanic Committee’s marketing sub-committee and executive director of sales for Yahoo en Espanol.

The Publicis campaign will complement, but not replace, individual member company efforts in this area, she said.