A recent industry op-ed has been circulating among Spanish-language media executives, and the argument in it travels further than the television business it was written for. In “Latin America’s Next Frontier: Regional Storytelling in the Affinity Economy” (HispanicAd, November 2025), media executive César Martínez argues that Latin America’s audiovisual industry has spent decades building stories market by market, and that its next advantage comes from doing the opposite: designing stories with regional intent and producing them with local truth. His phrase is “think regionally and execute locally.”
To be clear about what that is: it’s a practitioner’s point of view, not a research finding. Martínez presents no data, and his prediction that TV, streaming and digital will converge into one ecosystem by 2030 is a forecast, not a measurement. But the underlying tension he names — scale versus specificity — is exactly the tension business owners face when they decide how to talk to Hispanic customers. And on that question, there is measured evidence worth reading closely.
What the data actually shows about Hispanic audience behavior
Nielsen’s 2025 Diverse Intelligence Series report on Hispanic viewers, released in September 2025, found that streaming accounts for 55.8% of total TV time among Hispanic viewers, compared with 46% for the rest of the U.S. Hispanic audiences also outpaced general U.S. viewership of YouTube, Netflix and Disney platforms.
Two findings in the same report complicate any “just go digital” conclusion:
- Broadcast and cable remain what Nielsen calls a cultural touchpoint, driven by storytelling, shared experiences and variety programming. Variety and conversational formats account for nearly 20% of Hispanic viewing time — a signal, per Nielsen, of preference for emotionally resonant, family-oriented and interactive formats.
- Radio and podcasts together make up 79% of all daily audio time spent with ad-supported platforms, and Hispanic podcast listeners are 62% more likely than the general population to call a number from a podcast ad.
Distribution is also less settled than media plans assume. TelevisaUnivision’s networks went dark on YouTube TV on September 30, 2025 and only returned in late November under a new multi-year deal, according to Reuters — a nearly two-month gap in a major carriage path for Spanish-language programming.
Attention is growing faster than investment
The clearest gap Nielsen documents is a spending gap. Less than 1% of digital ad spend from U.S. online retailers went to Spanish-language websites in Q1 2025, and roughly 96% of the Spanish-language online allocation that did occur was directed through YouTube — a single platform that represents about 21% of Spanish-speaking audiences’ TV time. Nielsen also found that 56% of Hispanics wish they saw more representation in their social feeds, rising to 63% among Spanish speakers.
Meanwhile, the supply side is investing. In February 2025, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos announced a $1 billion commitment to produce series and films in Mexico over four years, noting that every Netflix title made in Mexico is produced with local partners. That is the “regional scale, local execution” model already operating at studio budget levels.
“Hispanic” is a market, not a monolith
Any storytelling strategy built on a single Hispanic persona will misfire, and the demographic record explains why. Pew Research Center’s October 2025 analysis of Census data found:
- 68 million Hispanic residents in 2024 — one in five Americans — with a median age of 31.2, younger than any other major racial or ethnic group.
- 57% are of Mexican origin nationally, but local mixes diverge sharply: about 74% of Hispanics in the Los Angeles metro and 77% in Dallas are of Mexican origin, while Cubans make up about 40% of Miami’s Latino population and Salvadorans about a third of metro Washington’s.
- Venezuelans were the fastest-growing origin group, more than doubling between 2019 and 2024.
- 71% of Latinos ages 5 and older spoke English proficiently in 2024, up from 59% in 2000, while the share speaking Spanish at home fell from 78% to 68%.
On news specifically, Pew found in March 2024 that 54% of Hispanic adults get news mostly in English, 21% mostly in Spanish and 23% in both about equally. Language choice is a segmentation variable, not a binary switch.
What these findings mean for marketing decisions
Read together, the evidence supports a few practical conclusions. These are interpretations, and we’ve separated them from the numbers above on purpose.
First, the “regional intent, local truth” idea has a direct marketing analog: build one narrative platform your brand can defend across markets, then adapt its execution — casting, references, language mix, humor, music — to the specific community you’re buying media in. Houston is not Miami, and the Pew origin data shows why a single creative cut can land in one and glance off the other.
Second, the streaming majority does not license abandoning broadcast, audio or live programming. Nielsen’s variety, sports-adjacent and audio findings point to formats that are shared, live and conversational — which is a creative brief as much as a channel plan.
Third, the retailer spending gap Nielsen identified suggests competitive room, not a guaranteed return. Underinvestment by peers can lower the cost of attention; it does not promise results.
Our recommendations
- Segment before you translate. Define your audience by origin mix, generation and language preference in your actual trade area, then decide the language of the work — rather than defaulting to a Spanish version of an English ad.
- Design for reuse, not repetition. Plan a shoot so it yields regional variants and vertical cutdowns from the start; that is the efficiency argument from Latin America applied to a marketing budget.
- Diversify beyond one platform. If nearly all Spanish-language online spend concentrates in one place, test audio, connected TV and creator partnerships so your reach isn’t hostage to a single algorithm or a carriage dispute.
- Cast and staff for authorship. Nielsen’s representation gap is a creative-credibility issue. Involve people from the community in writing and production decisions, not only in approvals.
- Measure incrementally. Hold out markets or audiences so you can tell whether culturally specific creative outperformed your baseline in your own data.
What the evidence does not settle
Nielsen’s index figures describe likelihood relative to the general population, not absolute rates, and its detailed methodology sits in the full report. Netflix’s economic-multiplier claims for Mexico are company-cited. And the op-ed that started this conversation is one executive’s argument. None of it predicts what a specific campaign will do for a specific brand.
Let’s build the local version of your story
At 11-11 Media, a Houston-based Hispanic marketing agency, this is the work: translating audience evidence into creative that a specific community recognizes as its own. If you’re deciding how to reach Hispanic customers in your market — and which language, platform and format to start with — get in touch with our team and let’s look at your audience together.