America Online and Univision announced Thursday that they renewed and expanded their 18-month-old co-marketing pact.
Under terms of the agreement, AOL for Broadband will carry some Univision programming, including celebrity clips, news and entertainment features. Also, some Univision articles and photos will appear in AOL Latino, the Internet service’s Hispanic-focused area.
“This new alliance is designed to deliver the best content and services for our members,” said Mark Greatrex, AOL’s executive vice president for marketing and brand development.
The deal calls for Univision and AOL to advertise each other on their respective Internet properties, and AOL will run adds across Univision’s television networks, including its flagship Univision network and TeleFutura channel. Irvine, Calif.-based agency Casanova Pendrill will develop the TV campaign
The pact is an extension of the agreement the two companies inked in December 2001.
Marketers have paid increasingly close attention to the booming U.S. Hispanic market. Early this year, the Census Bureau estimated that Hispanics now top blacks as America’s most populous minority group at 37 million. Hispanic consumers are estimated to have a combined annual purchasing power of $450 billion, according to DRI/McGraw Hill.
Spanish-language TV has received most of marketers’ attention — and dollars. According to estimates by CMR, in 2002 advertising revenue for Spanish-language TV grew 20 percent to $1.9 billion. Overall, CMR tracked the ad revenue growing 4.3 percent.
Marketers have slowly begun to turn their attention to capitalizing on the growing number of Hispanic Web surfers. While Hispanics’ Internet use lags behind the overall population, 12.4 million U.S. Hispanics have Internet access from home, work or school in January, according to comScore — far outnumbering the online populations of Spanish-speaking countries. Univision Online has been one beneficiary, growing its advertising base 92 percent in 2002, adding 72 advertisers.
Earlier this week, Nielsen//NetRatings announced the launch of a new Hispanic measurement panel, which signed up Univision Online as its charter client. Rival comScore has a competing service, which launched last October.