SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – Television networks are preparing for the yearly upfront sales season, but are considered unlikely to have the backing of an audience measurement company. TV ratings stalwarts Nielsen and Comscore probably won’t receive accreditation from the Media Rating Council by the time that networks present their programming slates to major advertisers and the press.
When it comes to implementing viewership metrics that are acceptable to media buyers and sellers, the TV industry needs to make sure that the growing Hispanic audience isn’t neglected or undercounted, Donna Speciale, president of sales and marketing at Spanish-language media giant Univision, said at Beet.TV’s Beet Retreat in mid-March.
“I’ve heard words like ‘transparency’ and ‘accuracy,’ but nobody has really been mentioning representation,” she said about the ongoing debate over TV ratings.
Speciale wants the industry to “make sure that when we’re looking at new currencies — whoever they are and how many there are — it’s a holistic representation of the country,” she said in an interview with Beet.TV senior editor Rob Williams. “Because if we don’t do that, then any of these new currencies are going to fall flat and we’re going to have to start all over again.”
High-Growth Audience Group
Speciale is working to diversify the range of brands that advertise in Spanish-language media to reach a high-growth segment of the U.S. population that other channels overlook.
“We do have a lot of advertisers leaning into the Hispanic audience, but there are a lot of advertisers that don’t actually lean into the Hispanic audience,” she said. “The Hispanic audience and multicultural — all of those areas — need to be more of a business imperative and not a ‘nice to have.’”
Multiple Platforms
Univision is expanding its range of offerings as the company integrates operations with Televisa’s media and production assets following a recently completed merger. The streaming platforms of the combined company will be grouped together under the ViX global brand.
ViX currently offers ad-supported video-on-demand (AVOD) and this year will launch a subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) tier called ViX+. Though ViX+ won’t have commercial breaks, advertisers will have opportunities to appear as sponsors of live sports programming.
“Our SVOD service is obviously going be premium, but we’re going to have sports on there as well as sports on AVOD,” Speciale said. “From an advertising perspective, you’re going to be able to actually put your messaging on ViX and a little bit of ViX+ as well.”
You are watching coverage from Beet Retreat San Juan 2022, presented by AppScience, Infillion, MadHive, SpringServe, Univision & VideoAmp. For more videos, please visit this page.
