It’s not surprising that the online U.S. Hispanic market has been steadily growing for a few years. As we continue to grow with our clients in this amazing space, we discovered the common misconception that Hispanics rely on and consume traditional media more than mainstream U.S. consumers. In our experience, that is simply not true, yet we have seen many brand strategies reaching the Hispanic demographic via traditional media. In reality, Hispanic consumers are heavy online users.

In our first whitepaper, “Hispanic Marketing: A Segmented Approach For Growing Brands,” we identified three major Hispanic segments. These segments are: “Older Made-It Hispanics”, “Traditional Hispanic Families”, and “Ambitious Young Hispanics”.

We were not surprised to see that all three segments are digital media users, but their usage stats and their distinct uses of digital media were surprising. Let’s take a look at how this played out.

Older Made-It Hispanics

We found that the “Older Made-It Hispanic” spent 8 hours per week on a desktop and used the internet as a secondary source for both personal and family entertainment. Our surveys revealed that 42% indicate the internet has changed how they obtain information on products/services and 66% are smartphone users. We also identified that 50% of the audience use mobile apps daily, and 62% use social media on a daily basis.

Traditional Hispanic Families

In the “Traditional Hispanic Families” segment, our survey found that, although they are light desktop users (roughly 1 hour per week!), 47% agree that the internet has changed the way they shop for products. Their mobile device usage came in at 55%, and 69% used a social media platform. We also noted that 20% of this demographic visits their social networking site of choice at least 3 times a day.

Ambitious Young Hispanics

“Ambitious Young Hispanics” is the segment that over-indexes in several internet and digital platforms. Even though this segment spends only 4 hours a week on a desktop computer, over 41% of those surveyed agreed that the internet is their primary source of personal and family entertainment. A very high percentage of them (97%!) own a cellphone, and 35% own tablets. It was also quite interesting to discover that 35% are likely to carry multiple devices, and 22% stay connected to the online world from the moment they wake up until they fall asleep at night. The tops apps this segment uses are Weather, Maps/Navigation, Games, Banking, and Music/Radio. Among the three categories, Ambitious Young Hispanics have the most social media users, coming in at 77%.

When we dug deeper into social media platform preferences among Hispanics, we found that the top 2 social media networks are Instagram and Snapchat. According to the Hispanic American report by Claritas, of the top six social media sites, Hispanics over-indexed on Instagram and Snapchat. They showed the lowest engagement on LinkedIn.

We are continuing to monitor how the Hispanic market is using digital platform features such as search, display, video, and social media. As a brand manager or marketing director, we recommend that you identify the Hispanic target audience you would like to reach and research how many impressions or searches are happening with your product or services. Google Ads and Facebook Ads have some great tools to help you track the Hispanic audience interest within your targeted geographical and commercial areas based on search history and liked categories. This kind of strategic approach can help you reach the Hispanic consumer more effectively.