TelevisaUnivision and Roku Launch CTV Ad Offering to Reach Hispanic Audiences

In an effort to better target U.S. Hispanic viewers, TelevisaUnivision and Roku are launching a new advertising solution.

This new ad offering, now available from TelevisaUnivision—and powered by Roku Data Cloud and the TelevisaUnivision Household Graph—combines reach with culturally relevant advertising for Hispanics across connected TV.

Under a unified Hispanic audience segment, the solution allows TelevisaUnivision ads to be delivered across all content endpoints with precise targeting and measurement to help maximize performance. 

In addition, TelevisaUnivision will be the exclusive reseller of Roku Media’s Spanish-language inventory, providing buyers with streamlined access through a direct supply connection. 

“The point is to make it really easy for [advertisers] to understand that they’re reaching and connecting with actual Hispanics,” Dan Riess, evp & chief operating officer, U.S. Advertising Sales at TelevisaUnivision, told ADWEEK.

This new solution empowers brands to confidently use Spanish-language creative in English content, as a recent study by TelevisaUnivision and Civic Science found that 85% of Hispanics are comfortable with seeing Spanish-language ads while watching English-language content. Additionally, according to Nielsen, 93% of Hispanic households are CTV households.

“We have data points. We have supply. Those are products that Roku is positioned to support,” Dylan Moorhead, Roku’s director of global publisher business development & strategic ad partnerships, said. “It’s finding partners that will leverage them in privacy-compliant ways that are complementary to their business and ours. And that’s what this does.”

In a conversation with ADWEEK, Riess and Moorhead provided more insight into the new ad offering, the importance of reaching Hispanic households, and the impact these audiences have on culture.

ADWEEK: What is the goal of the new ad-solution?

Riess: When we looked at the streaming landscape, and I think Dylan had a similar thought, it looked like brands really needed a bigger reach in premium content, an accurate way to connect with this audience without waste, but in culture and authentically in a way that was bigger than what is being offered in the market currently. So we partnered. We decided to take the expertise and focus that TelevisaUnivision has, and the big reach and premium content that Roku has as well, and both of our audience understanding and identify Hispanic consumers across the entire footprint of both of our companies, and serve that up in a simpler package with bigger reach than in the past to brands.

Moorhead: At Roku, we have the privilege of representing 125 million folks who use our TVs, over 90 million households, and a large portion of those households are Hispanic. TelevisaUnivision is focusing on that audience cohort and really trying to deliver a market-leading solution for it, partially powered by Roku. And that’s what this solution is from a Roku perspective: We are the lead into TV, the largest operating system in the United States. We have access to data points that can empower what Dan just said, and that’s, at its core, what this partnership is enabling. 

What makes a Hispanic household a must-target audience? 

Riess: I’ll go back to growth. So, the overall population growth, the Spanish youth generally, on average, are 10 years younger than the average of the general population in the U.S. The other side of it is the cultural influence that has been recognized unanimously over the last five or six years in music, art, content, etc. You have Bad Bunny playing the Super Bowl this year, so that’s an easy example. But really, when you look at mainstream music in the U.S., you’ve got a large chunk of it dominated by Latin artists right now. So, cultural influence, size, and actual growth. So if a brand wants to grow, whether it’s a politician, personal care, or pet food, you can’t win without this audience.

What does Roku see as the most significant difference between the Hispanic audience and the non-Hispanic audience, with all the data that you have collected?

Moorhead: When we look at the different audience types, what we recognize is that folks have different habits and different behaviors, and when trying to run ad solutions around that, it’s important that how we speak to different consumers is customized. All of that is rooted in having reliable data points, and we at Roku, through the Roku Data Cloud, pride ourselves on supporting high-fidelity, deterministic, privacy-compliant data made available through partnerships like this.