TransCity

The Hispanic online population and Hispanic Internet advertising in the U.S. are growing faster than the general market, and Hispanic portals and sites are beginning to get into fast-growing areas like user-generated content, behavioral targeting and search.

Spanish-language online ad spending is forecast to grow by 32 % in 2006, compared to 25% in the general market, and the number of Hispanic Internet users will grow from 15.7 million last year to 16.7 million in 2006, and increase by 33% over the next five years, according to eMarketer’s new Hispanic Youth Online report.

Hispanics account for 14 % of the U.S. population, but just 9 % of Internet users. The online Latino population is a youth market, with a median age nearly ten years younger than the online general population. By some breakdowns, about 40 % of Hispanic Internet users identified themselves as English-dominant, 40 % as bilingual and 20 % as Spanish-dominant.

As Spanish-language content grows, advertisers follow. Yahoo en Español, for instance, has signed up four major marketers – Motorola, General Motors Corp.’s GMC division, DirecTV and State Farm – to sponsor its World Cup fan site. The site is full of World Cup news, blogs, message boards and football-themed ads.

Hispanics who don’t spend much time on Spanish-language sites can be difficult to pinpoint, a sign that behavorial targeting may be one of the next trends. With behavioral targeting, Latinos can be identified and served relevant ads based on anonymous tracking of their previous online activities, which could include visits to Hispanic sites.

Source: Advertising Age