OTT Will Help Expand The Hispanic Audience Base

There has been lately a lot of talks about the Hispanic audience and their proximity towards OTT video services. Many operators have plans in the drawing room to launch Hispanic OTT services and target to capture 9.5 million Spanish-speaking households. The added bonus : they also get a broadband customer.

As per Nielsen Hispanic homes consume 78% of their TV with Spanish language programs. It leads operators to a question as in why these households don’t get a Spanish TV package.

Statistically, out of the 13.5 million Spanish speaking homes in the United States, the pay TV industry managed to attract just 4 million homes to a Spanish-language TV package offered by most providers. Which means the rest 9.5 million Spanish-language-dominant homes do not have pay TV or broadband.

Here are three major reasons for this:

Credit Record: Due to their investments in STBs and installation, operators are frisky about credit records. Millions of Spanish-language-dominant homes are rejected due to lack of sufficient credit. A major portion of Hispanic households are rejected because of a lack of proper credit record.

Absence of HD Content: An average Hispanic TV viewer is 24 and Nielsen assumes they have a strong inclination towards consuming content in HD. The lack of HD content with operators has kept them away from subscribing to pay TV.

The English Bundle Burden: As we mentioned earlier, Hispanic homes consume about 78% of TV viewing in Spanish. But most of the bundles made available to them are laden with English channels they never really watch.

OTT video services are an one-stop solution for such woes. They also enable operators to create skinny bundles and targeted packages for Hispanic homes. It remains to be seen how operators will adopt OTT in the first place but the future seems bright for the Hispanic audience.