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Should Latinos be a business’ next target market on the Internet?
If you want to explore new search marketing opportunities, expand
with growing economies, and reach young, Internet-savvy consumers,
tapping into the Latino market may prove to be one of the best
strategies out there today.
While U.S. search marketers have devoted most of
the attention to optimizing and advertising opportunities in the
major search engines of the dominant country and culture, there
are certainly fast-growing new markets and untapped opportunities
from multicultural audiences in their native country as well as
abroad.
Defining the
"Latino" market is not an easy task. The term "Latino" today is
commonly used to describe both U.S. Hispanics and Hispanics living
elsewhere in North, Central and
South America; or Spanish-speaking residents of
Caribbean
islands.
The term "Latin
America" is used loosely to refer to all of the Americas south of
the U.S. including countries such as Jamaica, Trinidad and Haiti.
Just beginning to understand the Latin American market can become
a history lesson in itself.
U.S. Hispanics
are more intensive than the U.S. general market. The average U.S.
Hispanic spends 20 percent more time online, with 25 percent more
pages viewed. They're using the Internet more than 17 hours per
week, and more than half that time is spent on sites written in
Spanish. In fact, U.S. Hispanics now spend more time online than
they do watching television.
Eighty-nine
percent of the U.S. Hispanic online population searches the
Internet. That's the highest ratio compared to all other worldwide
regions.
The top 3
Internet penetrations in terms of the overall population:
Argentina (26%), Mexico (18%) and Brazil (17%). (Compared to 15%
of Latin Americans as a whole).
An average
Internet penetration of 15 percent is not something that by itself
will turn any heads in the online marketing industry. But further
research turns up some enticing results. According to report by
comScore Networks, while Latinos make up just 7 percent of the
total search market worldwide, but they are posting double-digit
increases in terms of growth, with a 16 percent increase from the
previous year. Latinos represent over 45 million unique visitors
(ranked #2 in the entire world), and are predicted to grow at even
higher rates for 2007.
As for the search
portals, the major players have already settled in the region:
Google set up shop in Argentina, yet it is the most dominant
search engine by far, with a whopping 72 percent of the total page
views per share in the region. Yahoo is second with 17 percent of
total page views, MSN is third with two percent, and local search
market players make up the final nine percent.
What is
understood is that this market appreciates and responds to sites
that have made the effort to reach them on their own terms. It is
a market that is just starting to realize its potential, and
search marketers reaching out to the Latino market today may find
themselves to be the major players in a thriving and dominant
market for years to come. |
