Why Are Hispanic Millennials Streaming More Spanish-language Content

Why Are Hispanic Millennials Streaming
More Spanish-language Content?
It’s no secret that traditional Spanish broadcast networks have been experiencing a
steady loss of viewers in the U.S. year over year. Many factors are contributing to
this decline including a slowing in immigration from Mexico. But, perhaps even more
impactful is the fact that growth in the U.S. Hispanic market research is primarily
coming from U.S. born. However, our latest report, which focuses on the media
habits of the Total Market, shows a significant increase in the number of Hispanic
millennials streaming Spanish language content via OTT (over the top) services.
We asked a representative sample of U.S. Hispanics the following question in Q2 of
2017 and compared it with the same question we asked of a representative sample
of U.S. Hispanics in 2015 through our Hispanic Millennial Project:
Have you streamed any Spanish-language programming in the past 30 days?
Among Hispanics ages 35-64, there was a minimal lift in Spanish-language
streaming from 2015 to 2017:
In 2015, 41% of Hispanics 35-64 reported streaming Spanish-language content vs.
47% in 2017. While this represents a six-point shift, it is not statistically significant.
However, looking at the 18-34 Hispanic millennial cohort, we see a much different
picture:

Among Hispanic millennials, we do see a statistically significant increase in Spanishlanguage
streaming from 2015 to 2017, from 46% to 65%, a staggering 19-point
jump.
So, what’s driving this explosion of Spanish-language streaming behavior among
Hispanic millennials? Here are my thoughts:
1. More Options: In August of 2015, Netflix released its first Spanish-language
original series, Club de Cuervos. Since then, we have seen a surge of original
Spanish-language programming available on multiple streaming platforms
such as Hulu, Amazon Prime, and YouTube Red. Prior to streaming options,
Hispanic millennials were confined to traditional broadcast networks such as
Univision and Telemundo. But with the rising popularity of streaming, these
networks find themselves in the fight of their lives as they rage against a
technology that makes delivering Spanish-language content to content
craving millennials effortless. And we’ll see this natural progression towards
streaming more Spanish-language content continue.
2. Digital Reculturation: A topic I’ve written on before, digital reculturation is
the process of rediscovering one’s culture of origin/identification online
through digital representations of culture. Companies like mitú and Remezcla,
for example, are bringing Hispanic culture (more specifically, bi-cultural
Hispanic millennial culture) to the forefront of all their content, driving further
exploration of Spanish-language content via streaming. Mitú, in particular, has
expanded into original Netflix content, closing the gap between digital content
and streaming services.
3. Family: While Spanish-language proficiency is waning among U.S. Hispanics,
95% of U.S. Hispanics say it is important that future generations of Hispanics
living in the U.S. be able to speak Spanish. As millennials have children,

many may not be proficient enough in Spanish to transfer the language to
their children. Streaming Spanish-language children’s content may be the
millennial version of Español sin barreras for kids. The rise in Spanishlanguage
content isn’t geared only towards millennials. There are now more
Spanish-language children’s shows than ever available for streaming.
This surge in Spanish language streaming among millennials is fascinating. The
tension in data between a population that is becoming more English-dominant yet is
streaming more Spanish-language content is fertile ground for researchers to
cultivate a deeper understanding of this growing trend and the cohort driving it. For
marketers, the data makes one thing crystal clear: Spanish-language is still relevant.
The burden for marketers will be figuring out how to infuse Spanish-language
messaging into a population that operates in an English-dominant world.
This blog post was originally published on Engage: Hispanics
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September 25th, 2017|Blog, Hispanic Market Research, Hispanic Millennials, Hispanic Online Research, Online
Market Research, Total Market Research
About the Author: Mario X. Carrasco
Mario X. Carrasco is Co-Founder and Principal of ThinkNow Research, an awardwinning
culturally-integrated market research agency based in Burbank, CA. The
agency integrates Hispanic, African-American, and Asian insights into custom
market research for companies and government agencies looking to thrive in a
changing demographic environment.Under his co-leadership, ThinkNow Research
has successfully launched several innovative market research initiatives, such as
DigaYGane.com, one of the largest and most representative Hispanic online panels
in the industry as well as the first Minority Business Owner (B2B) Panel in the U.S.