When we think of Spanish-language advertising, we tend to think of Univision, the giant Hispanic broadcaster.

But while broadcast and, by extension, Univision, is still the dominant Spanish-language ad medium, its gains have finally begun to level off. Now other areas of Hispanic media are starting to lead the category’s growth.

Last year cable, magazines and spot TV saw major gains while broadcast TV was up a mere 2 percent. That’s according to a new study released by Nielsen Monitor-Plus, which finds that ad spending on Spanish-language media grew 3 percent in 2007, from $5.64 billion to $5.78 billion.

That’s compared to English-language media growth of 0.6 percent last year, according to Nielsen.

“Spanish-language media are showing continued growth,” says Annie Touliatos, vice president of sales development at Nielsen Monitor-Plus. “This reflects the growing importance of this area of advertising, evidenced by all the new media launched these past few years to better address Hispanic viewers.”

One category that benefited from such launches was cable, which grew 76 percent over 2006, from 125.4 million to $220.7 million. Much of that was due to the addition of Fox Sports en Espanol and MUN 2 to the category.

Excluding those two, cable still increased by a healthy 32.3 percent.

“We do see for this past year and into the first quarter of 2008 strong growth in cable for Spanish language,” Touliatos says.

National magazine spending across 20 publications rose 13 percent, from $144.1 million to $163.5 million. And spot TV jumped 8 percent, from $1.55 billion to $1.67 billion.

By contrast, network TV was up a mere 2 percent, though still accounting for more than half the category’s overall spending, going from $2.95 billion to $3.01 billion.

The growth in other categories is good news for Spanish-language media, as Univision’s years of huge growth appear to be over. During the recently ended upfront, Spanish-language broadcast spending, the bulk of it on Univision, was up about 6 percent over the previous year, compared to a 10 percent increase in 2007.

Other categories will have to continue their growth if Hispanic media is to remain ahead of the English-language growth curve. It also helps that, though some ad categories have cut back on spending in English-language media, they’ve maintained or increased their ad spend for Spanish-language.

“This is evident in categories like automotive, where overall advertising expenditures are down,” Touliatos says. “However when you isolate the analysis to just the Spanish-language media, there is a 4 percent increase in spend.”

Even newspapers, a category that has struggled in English-language media, looks more promising for Spanish-language media. Spending was flat to 2006 at $110.2, compared to a 7.5 percent decrease for 2007 across all the local newspapers that Nielsen tracks.

The only Hispanic media category to see losses was spot radio, down 20 percent from $759.7 million to $609.2 million.

“The 20 percent decrease is impacted by methodological changes to our service for this media type,” explains Touliatos. Spanish spot radio encompasses 74 stations across 24 markets.

The top Spanish-language parent company in terms of spending was Broadcasting Media Partners, Univision’s parent company, which poured $205.9 million into the market last year. Procter & Gamble was second at $168.7 million, though both were down from last year.

Automotive was the biggest product category, up 4 percent from last year to $659.4 million. Wireless telephone was second at $313.6 million, up 35 percent from 2006.