Karina Dobarro, svp of multicultural and brand strategy at Horizon Media, sees music as a critical avenue to reaching the diverse audiences that clients want to connect with. In working with music video platform Vevo, Horizon Media is carving out a strategy to engage with multicultural customers when they’re most engaged.
“Vevo is reflective of a multicultural shift, when you look at their content and their users. We know that for Hispanics and African Americans, music is a huge passion point. To be able to engage them in that environment, that’s a factor,” Dobarro says in an interview with Beet.TV.
Music videos also represent the short-form content that Dobarro says is consumed by multicultural consumers, particularly on mobile, more so than other groups. Working with Vevo extends Horizon’s clients reach beyond linear and other traditional content outlets. Buying across linear, digital and OTT platforms is key, Dobarro says, to fully encompassing where audiences today are consuming content.
Having a presence on Vevo is just the start. Targeting the right audiences in accordance to who brands are trying to reach puts ad dollars to better use. On Vevo, Dobarro breaks down audience targeting capabilities in three ways.
- By genre: Brands can target ads by specific genre, including Latin music or Regional Mexican, according to Dobarro.
- By artist: Take the Super Bowl for example. A brand with an ad buy could also make a targeted playlist including halftime performers and Latina artists Shakira and Jennifer Lopez to augment linear spend.
- By context: Contextual targeting, specifically by language and culture, helps brands connect with customers in the right setting. “We know language is important to the multicultural consumer and the Hispanic consumer in particular, and for younger Hispanics they’re trying to retain and sustain their culture and language,” says Dobarro. “Music oftentimes is that gateway to be able to connect with that culture.”
Horizon Media’s approach is to define audience insights before designing a media plan, so that it’s better understand what group an ad or campaign is trying to reach. Then, with that background information, Vevo’s targeting capabilities can match Horizon’s audience to its own. Using this strategy to define and target multicultural groups, Dobarro says, is necessary.
“As the US becomes more diverse, we’re seeing marketers realizing they need to speak to these multicultural segments,” she says. “They are not only growing in size and economic power but also in influence. For a brand, if they’re looking to grow as a business, they need to be speaking to these segments.”
This video is part of Beet.TV’s leadership series Vevo Everywhere: Evolving Content Distribution. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.
