For Hispanic Consumers, a Different Digital Divide
As digital marketers try to connect with a growing US Hispanic population, they will need to get past the outdated picture of a population languishing on the wrong side of a gaping “digital divide.” Thanks in part to smartphones, Hispanics have become a very digital cohort.

In the past, TV advertising’s value was obvious. Ask anyone “Where’s the beef?” or “Can you hear me now?” and chances are they’ll immediately associate those questions with Wendy’s and Verizon. But in the digital-first world, TV’s place in an omnichannel marketing strategy is shifting.
With major issues in the headlines affecting the multicultural community, there is no shortage of information sharing and social activism—both with in-person protests and social media fundraising. For example, according to the Washington Post, one in five Americans have protested in the streets or participated in political rallies since the beginning of 2016. Of those, 19 percent said they had never before joined a march or a political gathering. By: CMC Research Chair Nancy Tellet
Radio is America’s top weekly reach platform, both overall and with Black and Hispanic consumers—75 million of whom tune in each week. This Audio Today report profiles those audiences, their listening preferences, technology trends, and the unique value they offer to advertisers with a “sound strategy.”
The first rule of “Culture Club” is that we always talk about “Culture Club!” No, we’re not talking about rock bands, music videos or cult movies. “Culture Club” refers to any platform, digital or traditional with in-culture specific content for a multicultural segment. Whether it’s a specific site, app or even in-culture content in “mainstream” places, it’s this in-culture digital content that is hitting homeruns out of the park among multicultural consumers! Digital Lives 2018, a study by the Culture Marketing Council: The Voice of Hispanic Marketing (CMC) found that culture drives digital behavior across all multicultural segments, but even authentically diverse ads done correctly in the mainstream can increase engagement with multicultural and some millennial non-Hispanic whites (NHW)! By Nancy Tellet – CMC Research Chair
The year is 2024, and more than 50 percent of American product purchases are made through e-commerce thanks in part to the rise of “app-tapping” (waving your phone to purchase a product) and speak-to-purchase ads that merge TV and streaming content with in-home digital assistants. Video games and social media are as popular as ever, though more and more people prefer to hang out in virtual-reality “PlaceScapes,” where savvy marketers are starting to invest. The process once known as advertising is nearly unrecognizable as companies rely on artificial intelligence to disseminate targeted ads based on billions of data inputs, though tougher privacy laws and the proliferation of ad blockers continue to pose challenges. By Chuck Kapelke
The Latino Donor Collaborative (LDC) released Latino Gross Domestic Product Report: Quantifying the Impact of American Hispanic Economic Growth, a study that for the first time ever calculates the full Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the American Latino population. At $2.13 trillion, the estimated U.S. Latino GDP is the seventh largest GDP in the world, with American Latinos driving growth of the U.S. workforce and economy.
Technology is transforming Latinx consumer behavior, from shopping to communication and media consumption, according to Descubrimiento Digital: The Online Lives of Latinx Consumers, released by Nielsen. The majority (60%) of Latinx consumers were either born or grew up in the internet age, compared to 40% of non-Hispanic Whites. This means today’s Hispanic consumers didn’t transition to the internet; they were raised with it.
The vast amount of product information available to consumers through online search renders most advertising obsolete as a tool for conveying product information. Advertising remains useful to firms only as a tool for persuading consumers to purchase advertised products. In the mid-twentieth century, courts applying the antitrust laws held that such persuasive advertising is anticompetitive and harmful to consumers, but the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) was unable to pursue an antitrust campaign against persuasive advertising for fear of depriving consumers of advertising’s information value. Now that the information function of most advertising is obsolete, the FTC should renew its campaign against persuasive advertising by treating all advertising beyond the minimum required to ensure that product information is available to online searchers as monopolization in violation of section 2 of the Sherman Act.
In marketing, it’s important to keep pace with demographic change. Even better to stay ahead. Right now, for instance, significant changes in the U.S. cultural landscape have made multicultural marketing imperative. By Mario X. Carrasco is Co-Founder and Principal of ThinkNow Research























