Has any one out there tried buying social media for the Hispanic market? Well, first of all, there are very few players in the market today speaking only to Hispanic. Most of them are pretty hokey at best. The general market sites cannot discriminate between its total user universe from the Hispanic users. They do not ask any qualifying questions which allow for segmentation. This causes CPM to levels to rise so much that they do not make strategic sense. I mean, after all, isn’t the claim that internet supposed to me efficient?

Myspace.com has the most attractive sampling of Hispanics, but there is little to nothing you can do to target them. You can do so my choosing topics of Hispanic interests like music etc, or make assumptions by geographic location but nothing that you can truly rely on to deliver the results. I don’t know, but if I were myspace.com I would be working 24/7 to find away to filter audiences. Other players like hi5 have been playing in the global market and have made inroads in countries of Hispanic origin. They are looking to fill this void in the Hispanic market but yet, they still cannot explain abnormally large number of Latino subscribers, in
Miami of all places. Naturally, this is something I found curious during a meeting with that vendor where I proceeded to probe the numbers.

Then there are portal “players” breaking into social media, many from Mexico. Esmas (by Televisa) has its own set of issues with the Univison/Televisa online syndication moratorium. These two companies have sued each other to make sure neither profit from missed opportunities. Terra is seeking ways to grow or face extinction as their site looks like every other out there, and are seeking new audiences to tap into such is gay and lesbian Hispanics with their “Todo Gay” channel. Like many things in marketing, we must face the duality of quality vs. quantity. The Hispanic market has the quantity, so where is the quality? If we would just stop focusing on the quantity of advertisers and focus on the quality of the final product, I believe we could actually move social networking to the next level. I believe social media is the Univision of 15-20 years ago…a lot of old Cantinflas movies and reruns of Chavo del 8 but with great potential.

- Written by Miamiadguy