Study: Pharmaceutical companies lag in Hispanic-targeted ad spending
FAIRFAX, Va. — According to a new report from national trade organization AHAA: the Voice of Hispanic Marketing, pharmaceutical marketers have room for improvement when it comes to Hispanic advertising.
According to AHAA, pharmaceutical marketers increased their aggregate Hispanic advertising investment by only 4% between 2010 and 2014 to $165 million. Among the top 500 U.S. advertisers, the pharmaceutical category allocation to Hispanic dedicated media remained basically unchanged at 2.5%, which is significantly less than the national average of 8.5%.
Despite research supporting the importance of the Hispanic market to corporate bottom lines, the average Hispanic ad spend by pharmaceutical companies decreased 9% from $6.9 million to $6.3 million in 2014. According to the organization, this category remains at a "laggard" allocation level, defined as companies who assign 1% to 3.5% of their marketing budget to Hispanic dedicated efforts.
Over the past five years, the top 500 advertisers boosted their spending in Hispanic-targeted media by 63% or $2.7 billion from $4.3 billion in 2010 to $7.1 billion. The top 500 advertisers boosted their average spending from $9 million in Hispanic-targeted media in 2010 to today's $14 million.
Data was collected from Nielsen Monitor Plus, which tracked more than 340,000 companies' advertising expenditures in English and Spanish. This data was analyzed by Santiago Solutions Group for AHAA. SSG divided companies into five tiers according to the percent allocation to Spanish/Bilingual media: Best-in-Class (more than 14.2%), Leaders (6.4%-14.2%), Followers (3.6%-6.3%), Laggards (1%-3.5%), and On the Sidelines (Less than 1%).
SSG also segmented the Top 500 overall spending (English + Spanish) companies for years 2010 to 2014, thus permitting the analysis of trends in the marketplace. Ad spend Includes spending in Network TV, Spot TV, Cable TV, radio, magazines, newspaper and FSIs. It excludes B2B, display, outdoor and cinema.