We’ll move beyond “en Español” to reach Hispanic and Latino audiences

In 2024, Hispanic and Latino audiences will play a crucial role in shaping a new business strategy in U.S. media. The opportunity is here because of the continued growth in population and economic power in the sector, their potential impact on the upcoming presidential election, and the promise that digital tools like generative AI present for growing new audiences. It’s the perfect storm and publishers will start looking more closely and what that means for them.

Leaders in U.S. news organizations have failed at reaching these audiences and unlocking their potential because they haven’t understood a core point: Hispanic and Latino audiences are very diverse. Understanding all the populations that exist within them is a key step for a successful business strategy. U.S. publishers need to ask questions like “How can I do a better job at reaching and engaging Hispanic and Latino audiences [yes, plural]? And what is the right strategy to build a business model around them?”

According to U.S. Census Bureau surveys, in 2022, the U.S. Hispanic population consisted of 63.7 million people. More than 42 million of them spoke Spanish at home. The median age of this population was 30.7, and it is projected that by 2060, over 1 in 4 Americans will be Hispanic or Latino. Doesn’t that sound like an opportunity?

Effective Hispanic and Latino audience strategies shouldn’t just be centered around translating articles, graphics, videos and audio into Spanish (much less lazily using generative AI tools to automate these translations without the help of humans to capture the cultural nuances that large language models currently lack).

A successful strategy doesn’t just mean adding “en Español” to a “lighter” version of a news product, or creating a Latino section or vertical separate from the core product. It doesn’t mean parachute reporting on niche issues for soundbites or color. And it doesn’t mean hiring a Hispanic or Latino journalist and assigning them to cover “Latino issues” or “the Latino vote,” presumably to check a diversity checkbox.

To successfully approach Hispanic and Latino audiences you need to think big, create a business strategy you believe in, and give it time to grow. It’s about making a standalone business with its own brand personality.

The total economic output, or GDP, of Hispanics and Latinos living in the U.S. was $3.2 trillion in 2021, up from $2.8 trillion in 2020, according to the U.S. Latino GDP Report produced annually by the UCLA Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture. If the Latino and Hispanic populations living in the U.S. were an independent country, their GDP would be the fifth largest in the world — larger than the GDPs of India, the U.K., or France.

In the U.S., Univision and Telemundo had a combined audience of over 1.1 million people daily in 2022, according to the Pew Research Center. News organizations can reach, represent, and engaging with Hispanic and Latino audiences by making real commitments to these populations and building relationships that earn their loyalty. But to do that, we need to understand the strong diversity within these audiences in terms of cultures, political views, religion, personal values, and lifestyles.

The phrase “Hispanics are not a monolith” is trite, but also true. A one-size-fits-all approach to develop a plan to address these communities has never worked at scale in the past for a reason.

In the upcoming election year, it is especially important to think about these audiences in all their dimensions and see the opportunity as a big one, not as a small part of something else. In the 2022 midterms, Hispanics were estimated to make up 14.3% of all eligible voters, and 34.5 million Hispanic Americans will be eligible to vote in the 2024 election.

News organizations can capture Latino and Hispanic audiences. One way to do that is to create good journalism within your brand for them — but it’s important to keep the editorial standards, values, and product promise intact. Don’t create a reduced version that makes audiences feel like you’re pandering or tokenizing them as some kind of cultural amalgamation that doesn’t really represent any of the populations the broader group contains.

Another way to do it? Create joint ventures or partnerships with news organizations that already know and serve these audiences. Leading media outlets in Latin American countries are taking the lead in providing information to their communities in the United States. They have created digital concepts for their audiences in the diasporas, allowing them to capitalize on programmatic advertising with a high level of performance.

An example is the newspaper where I work, Diario Libre, based in the Dominican Republic. Our product DLUSA, focused on the Dominican diaspora in the U.S., represents 30% of the total audience and 35% of profits for Diario Libre, and we’re just starting out. In 2024 (also an election year in the Dominican Republic), we’ll put a lot of resources into the project and we’re looking for a 20% increase in revenue and audience.

Finding an answer to reaching Latino and Hispanic audiences isn’t rocket science, but it requires the desire to act, an understanding of the population and potential audiences, and a defined action plan to try new approaches. Engaging with Hispanic audiences will be crucial for news publishers in the decades to come, and 2024 is the best moment to start doing it in earnest.