New media
The scoop on Hispanics on the web
By Diego Vasquez
Mar 24, 2009 - 1:10:58 AM

The percentage of Hispanics with online access trails the national average generally, with only 54 percent online, compared to nearly 70 percent of the total U.S. population. But while they may be lagging in online access, they’re way ahead of the rest of the online population when it comes to downloading everything from music to video, according to a new report from Scarborough Research. Media people hoping to reach this group would be smart to check out major downloading sites like iTunes and Amazon, as Hispanic users are 21 percent more likely to download digital content than the average adult user. Forty-two percent of Hispanic users have downloaded some form of digital content over the past month, compared to 35 percent of the general internet population. Music leads with nearly a third of Hispanic users downloading music the past month, compared with a quarter of the internet population generally. This also highlights the rapid increase in broadband connections for Hispanics, which have grown from 13 percent in 2002 to 68 percent this year. Overall Hispanics’ internet access has grown 13 percent since 2004, compared to an 8 percent growth rate for the web generally. Gary A. Meo, senior vice president of print and internet sales at Scarborough, talks to Media Life about where to target online Hispanics, what types of downloads are most popular, and why certain markets have a denser online Hispanic population.

 
What did you find most interesting or most surprising about this survey?
 
There tends to be a myth that Hispanics lag behind the general population when it comes to internet usage, so those less familiar with the Hispanic market may find it surprising that Hispanics’ use of internet is strong and growing.
 
It is not a surprise to us, as we see this information all of the time.

Additionally, not only are Hispanics increasingly going online, but they are interacting and engaging with content. We see this in the higher-than-average download rates.
 

What's the most important thing media buyers and planners can take from it?
 
Advertisers and marketers targeting Hispanics need to have an online strategy in addition to their legacy media strategy, particularly when it comes to young Hispanics. Hispanics are robust users of the internet.
 

Why are Hispanic internet users such heavy digital content downloaders?
 
We examined our data and believe it could be driven by youth. Hispanics are younger than the general adult population, and those who download are younger than other internet users. So there is a connection here.
 
There could also be cultural reasons but we cannot speculate because we did not examine culture in this report.
 

What type of content are they likely to download and why?
 
Music, video and audio clips are the top three downloading categories for Hispanic internet users, and this is the same for the general internet population.
 
Not only are these the download categories that tend to attract youthful internet users, they also represent established download brands. For example, iTunes is an established music/video/audio downloading brand.
 

How have marketers specially targeted Hispanics with broadband access to establish brand loyalty with this group?
 
We did not look at this in the study and would encourage you to contact Hispanic marketers for their point of view.

But you can see how serious marketers are about targeting Hispanics online when you consider that the leading internet brands – Google, Yahoo, Amazon, etc. – all have Spanish-language options on their sites.
 

How much more room for growth is there in the Hispanic web market generally? That is, will we keep seeing them go online at a faster pace than the population at large?
 
Given that, right now, 54 percent of Hispanics are online, versus 69 percent of the general population, there is definitely still room to grow. We expect to continue to see the rate of internet usage increase as long as the Hispanic population in America continues to grow the way it has been over the past decade.
 

Is there much difference between online user rates for primarily English- and primarily Spanish-speaking Hispanics?
 
We did not examine language in this report.
 

What differences demographically do you see between markets where Hispanics are likely to have a broadband connection (Miami) and those where they are not (El Paso, Dallas, etc.)?
 
Miami is a local market that has an older Hispanic population that has been in the U.S. for a longer period of time and is therefore more established socioeconomically.

Those markets that have lower broadband penetration tend to have younger Hispanic adults who are not as established in the U.S. yet.