Stacie de Armas of Nielsen: 55 pct. of Latinos think streaming platforms have the most relevant content for their segment

The new streaming economy: The digital transformation was the chat held as part of the HCM Summit Series this Tuesday with the participation of Isabel Rafferty Zavala, founder and CEO of Canela Media; Romina Rosado, executive VP and general manager of Hispanic Streaming at NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises; Rene Santaella, executive VP of Digital and Streaming Media at Estrella Media, Inc.; and Rafael Urbina, general manager and executive VP of AVOD Streaming at TelevisaUnivision, Inc. and CEO of ViX. The panel was moderated by Stacie M. de Armas, senior VP of Diverse Intelligence and Initiatives at Nielsen, while Isabella Sanchez, VP of Media Integration at Zubi Advertising and member of the board of directors and treasurer of the Hispanic Marketing Council (HCM), was charged with welcoming the participants. De Armas provided some interesting figures to put into context the importance of the Hispanic market for the streaming area. She cited Latinos and the new streaming economy to say that this demographic has a monthly viewing power of 254 billion minutes (an example from September 2021); Latinos represent 14 percent of all households with TV and 16 percent of all households with smart television; 55 percent of Latinos believe that streaming platforms have the most relevant content for their segment, and while Hispanics/Latinos spend 34 percent of their time watching streaming, non-Hispanic whites spend just 25 percent of their time doing the same. Asked about the challenges of streaming in the Hispanic market, Santaella of Estrella Media said that the biggest challenge is getting a sufficient level of investment to be able to connect with young people, who make up the fastest growing audience segment. Rosado of Telemundo said the challenge is not to compete with each other but to compete for the most audience time, and that it’s hard to be a scaleup company at this point in time. Rafferty of Canela Media agreed with Rosado that the competition is for audience time but spoke of further complications on the Hispanic side. “The challenge is finding out how to deal with the problems effectively and provide a platform for the Latino segment with which they really feel connected,” Rafferty said. For Urbina of TelevisaUnivision, the biggest challenge of all is resolving consumer confusion about the diversity of streaming platforms and apps. He added that TelevisaUnivision is super focused on upscaling streaming before getting into the segmentation discussion. “We’re investing strongly in innovative formats for advertising, in terms of shoppable, interactive ads to be revealed in Upfront,” he said. Rafferty said he’s excited to see how “we’re more and more the ones that focus on Latino consumers in order to serve them better. For the executive it is absolutely key for a free streaming service to have a vast content library. “We want to be the best option in the multicultural category for the Latino consumer. The most prodigious growth no longer comes from the Mexican audience – now it’s happening in Puerto Rico, El Salvador and Venezuela, among others. Technology gives steaming its power and streaming brings us data that is crucial for advertisers. Streaming must be used correctly to improve the advertising experience. Metadata is not a good way to analyze the consumer, what we have to analyze are the emotions aroused by the content,” he said.