TransMedia in Hispanic Television – Univision and Buick

It’s an Ad Within an Ad Within a TV Show for Univision Novela

AdAge Reports:  “In Bid to Sell Buicks With Intrigue and Plot, Network and GM Roll Out Character-Driven Spot.”

The article reports:  “As head of Hispanic ad agency Publicidad Arismendi, Eva Rodriguez won General Motors’ Buick account and created the car brand’s first Spanish-language commercial, which ran on Univision last week. But Eva isn’t real. She’s the heroine of Univision’s 8 p.m. telenovela “Eva Luna,” and part of her role is to take the product integration common in novelas to a new level.

In typical novela fashion, Eva starts out as a humble but beautiful apple-picker in Southern California and finds success and riches after falling in love with a man — Arismendi’s creative director, Daniel Villanueva — and being mentored by the agency’s founder, Julio Arismendi as she nurses him through a long illness. Eva rises to the top of the agency through a combination of hard work, her love of advertising, and the tutelage of Julio, who also leaves her a majority stake in the Los Angeles-based Hispanic ad agency after he fakes his own death when his evil wife Marcela poisons him.

Was this Buick spot, ‘Noses,’ created by Publicidad Arismendi?  For General Motors, the relationship with Univision and the “Eva Luna” novela goes way beyond traditional product integration, although there is plenty of that as different characters zip around in Chevy Cruzes and Traverses. In addition, Buick sponsors, among other things, the online replays of “Eva Luna” episodes on Univision’s novela site.

Not only is the novela set in an ad agency, the plot includes the fictional Publicidad Arismendi’s quest for the Buick account, Eva’s successful pitch for the business, and the shooting of the real commercial, essentially relaunching Buick in the U.S. Hispanic market with the brand’s first Spanish-language spot.

“We knew Buick didn’t have any commercial creative so integrating the car into the storyline wasn’t going to be enough,” said Lia Silkworth, senior VP-media director at Tapestry, part of Starcom MediaVest Group.

General Motors’ media deal with Univision built in the cost of producing the commercial, and the filming of the spot was done at the same time as the scene of Eva directing the commercial. During the two-day shoot at an upscale Miami shopping mall, the “Eva Luna” cast and crew spent about an hour filming Eva, dressed in a white trenchcoat and very high heels, hopping behind cameras, scrutinizing storyboards and giving directions.”

TLP Following 2011 Video Trends for TransMedia Packaging

Online Viewing Stats:

comScore Video Metrix data shows that 174 million US internet users watched online video content in March 2011 for an average of 14.8 hours (888 minutes) per viewer. The total US internet audience engaged in more than 5.7 billion viewing sessions during the course of the month.  Unique viewers were up 2.5% from 169.65 million in February 2011 and down about 3% from 180.2 million in March 2010. Viewing sessions were up 15% from about 5 billion the prior month, and average time per user was up about 9% from 816.4 minutes.

Mobile Video Popularity Jumps 41%

In Q4 2010, 301 million Americans used a mobile phone; of those mobile subscribers, 24.7 million watched video on a mobile phone. This marks a 41% increase from roughly 17.5 million mobile video viewers in Q4 2009.

Nielsen analysis indicates the growing popularity of mobile video is due, in part, to the rapid adoption of media-friendly mobile devices, including smartphones, which make up 30% of the marketplace.

Demographic Stats:

Almost eight in 10 (77.9%) US online video viewers are white, according to [pdf] data collected in November 2010 by The Nielsen Company. Hispanics represent the second-largest ethnic market for online video consumption, representing 12.1% of online video viewers.

Teens Consume Most Mobile Video

Younger consumers ages 12-17 are the heaviest mobile video viewers, watching an average of seven hours and 13 minutes of mobile video a month during Q4 2010. Mobile subscribers on average watched four hours and 20 minutes of mobile video a month in Q4 2010.

Middle class households with children younger than 18 earning $50,000 to $74,999 annually also use the internet at a disproportionately high rate. These households constitute 11% of the internet universe, a 37.5% larger figure than the 8% of the total US population they represent. Interestingly, lower class households with children younger than 18 earning less than $50,000 annually use the internet at a 33% higher rate than their share of US population (16% compared to 12%), meaning they are more likely to be online than middle class households.

Other Findings

• Almost three-fourths of Americans older than age 18 were married in 1960, but only 52% are today.
• Hispanics represent the fastest-growing segment of the multi-cultural nation, growing 40% in the past 10 years and numbering 50 million people.
• Households with children younger than age 18 will be predominantly multi-cultural by 2020 (Hispanic, African-American and Asian-American); 40% already are multi-cultural today due in large part to immigration.
• High income families view less TV but spend more time viewing with kids, using time-shifted media four times more often than low income households.

TLP Completes “Connected TV” White Paper – Latin TV Market Focus

Managed TV versus Over the top video

The impact of connected TVs on the TV industry (RequestPDF – contact button)

What You Need To Know: A Sixty Second Version

UNIVISION STATEMENT AT YOUTUBE:  You’ve probably read the headlines: “New census milestone: Hispanics reach 50 million”; “U.S. Hispanic population tops 50 million” and one of our favorites “Los USA — Latino Populations Grow Faster with Wider Spread.” The U.S. Census numbers have confirmed that the Hispanic population has reached an important milestone, the 50 million mark. We are waking up to a new reality, a new face of America. The New American Reality video speaks to the unique experience of being Latino in America today.  Univision is proud to Inform, Entertain and Empower the Hispanic community. To learn more about how we reach the Hispanic consumer. 

March 18, 2010. Cable TV Is Doomed. “The death of cable television would probably still be inevitable without the Federal Communications Commission’s national broadband plan, which aims to expand broadband Internet access to 90% of Americans and dramatically increase access speeds. …We’re already familiar with two business models for web TV: Hulu’s ad-supported programming and iTunes’ micro-payment system of about $2 per ad-free show. Both of these are preferable to cable not only because they’re more cost-effective but because they allow the viewer a greater degree of control. You only pay for what you watch, whereas with cable you pay primarily for things you’ll never watch. Americans watch on average 5 hours of TV a day, so a cable subscriber with 100 channels is only consuming 0.2% of the programming he or she is charged for. With the average cable bill swelling to $64 a month in 2009 from $47.50 a month in 2004, ditching cable for web-based TV is an increasingly attractive option.

It is well known the broadcast television industry faces an unprecedented crisis amid a global economic downturn. News and industry experts have reported a dramatic fall in TV advertising spends, in many countries up to 50%. … and earnings drops to levels of 1995. There has been a multiplication of channels, brand confusion, and an ongoing fragmentation of audiences … An increasing number of bankruptcies of networks and production companies populate the news channels. This trouble in the global broadcast industry is well known by now.

An average of 179 Million Americans watched online video each month in 2010. Engagement levels also rose, with viewers watching online videos more frequently88.6 million people watched online video on an average day in December 2010 (up 32 percent from December 2009), while viewing sessions totaled 5.8 billion for the month (up 13 percent). The average American spent more than 14 hours watching online video in December, a 12-percent increase from last year, and streamed a record 201 videos, an 8-percent increase.

In February 2008 the average Hispanic-American over the age of 11 spent more time online than watching television, according to the Terra Networks-sponsored “Hispanic Syndicated Study,” conducted by comScore Media Metrix. In general, online Hispanics—independent of their language preferences and acculturation levels—are heavily engaged in technology,” wrote the report’s authors.  Every day, more than half (56%) of Hispanic-Americans surveyed said they spent at least an hour online, which was slightly more than the 50% who spent an hour or more watching TV. On a weekly basis, Terra reported that more Hispanic-American Internet users spent 13 or more hours online (30%) than watched TV for the same amount of time (23%).

Telemundo Internacional chooses TVU for live Internet broadcasts for its blockbuster Telenovela series “Decisiones” Mountain View - August 15, 2008 – Telemundo Internacional, an NBC Universal division deemed the preeminent leader in Latin American television worldwide, and TVU Networks, a global live Internet TV service with a user base of 18 million viewers in 200 countries, jointly announced today the addition of a Telemundo channel dedicated to its chart-topping series “Decisiones” that will be available worldwide excluding Mexico and the US.

October 14, 2010 Article:  TV revenue growth in Latin America set to explode “TV revenue in Latin America will be worth $18.5 billion in 2015 – up more than 50% on the 2009 total, according to a new research report from Informa Telecoms & Media. Latin American economies are showing signs of long-term strength, signalling big growth for television services in the next five years. “Greater economic resilience is now allowing the Latin TV sector to enjoy stable growth – putting it in its best position for decades,” said analyst Adam Thomas. In other words, with more disposable income floating around, subscribers are more likely to pour it into living-room entertainment. The growth will be so significant as to reduce the North American market’s dominance in pay-TV uptake over the next five years: Informa is forecasting that pay TV subscription numbers are anticipated to reach 57.3 million by the end of 2015 in the CALA region, up 57% from 36.6 million in 2009. In contrast, the U.S. in 2009 had 96 million digital households – almost 80% of the pan-continental total. By 2015 its statistical dominance will decline to accounting for 63% of the Americas total. Informa is expecting consistent growth in digital TV too, with the Latin region forecast to almost quadruple in size from 15.9 million digital TV households at the end of 2009 to 57.1 million by 2015. Brazil and Mexico combined to account for 51% of digital subscribers at the end of last year, their combined regional share will edge up to 54% during the forecast period.