Craig Geller Azteca America
The most important thing in the Upfront speech delivered by Craig Geller, EVP, HC2 Network (owners of Azteca America), was the reminder to bear in mind the size and scope of the Hispanic market. It was the focal point of the Upfront conversation. To do so effectively “people must reach Hispanics through relevant cultural content that speaks to them, and today this is represented by TV in Spanish.”
He mentioned that they have seen brands that have approached the Hispanic market softly or have cut their investment in it and today have realized that they lost a good part of the business. “These companies are reevaluating their strategy, and 1) they realized that they might have reached the Hispanic market, but not effectively and 2) they are going to return to the market bigger and better,” he added.
He sees tremendous growth on his AVOD platform, Azteca Más, in the last year. “We launched our OTT on Smart TVs and are ready to do so in mobile in upcoming weeks. We are waiting to grow in this media too because Latinos adopt technology early,” he assures.
He said that only on Smart TVs they already have more than 200 thousand. Most on Roku, but also on Apple, Amazon and APRA.
Another trend he has observed is that as people cut pay TV services, Over the Air services (OTAs), over the air (OTA) stations are increasingly important.
When consulted on fusions of big media groups, he expressed that scale plays an important role in everything they do. “We independents are going to fight harder and more intelligently”.
