Is Measurement of Hispanic Streaming Audiences No Bueno? Or Does Traditional Spanish-Language TV Just Not Translate?

Trying to get a handle on Vix

Back in September, Nielsen released a report on the US Hispanic streaming market, showing that this audience is outpacing the general market in terms of consumption. Specifically, Nielsen found that streaming drives 55.8% of total TV time for Hispanic viewers, surpassing the 46% for the rest of the U.S.

So you might think that TelevisaUnivision and Telemundo, historically the two biggest players in Hispanic media in the US, would pop each month in the Nielsen rankings - or that of other metrics firms.

But alas - qué lástima.

Consider that Vix, TelevisaUnivision’s streaming platform, boasts of 80,000 hours of on-demand content, and recently featured Kanye West’s return to Mexico, as well as a slew of new microdramas. The company says that Vix, combined with the reach of multiple Hispanic-aimed channels as part of a recent partnership with Roku, now attracts 45 million unique viewers per month.

However, Vix does not show up in the monthly Nielsen Gauge report, and rarely places any content in the top streaming show rankings.

I asked around, and iSpot, VideoAmp, even Kochava were not able to give me any third party audience data for Vix. Meanwhile, Nielsen’s report did note that “Hispanic audiences outpaced general U.S. viewership of streaming services YouTube, Netflix and Disney.”

Does that mean that Vix just isn’t connecting with U.S. Hispanic audiences - or is it not well tracked? Well, Nielsen says that Vix’s monthly audience falls below the 1% streaming threshold, so it doesn’t show up in the Gauge or various program rankings.

Does it matter that TelevisaUnivision doesn’t pay for Vix to be directly tracked by Nielsen - as some contend? Nielsen says no. “The Gauge includes viewing to all sources, and breaks out those that clear the threshold,” said Brian Fuhrer, SVP, Product Strategy & Thought Leadership for Nielsen.

For its part, much of the viewership for NBCUniversal’s Telemundo is baked into data for Peacock (though Telemundo does also have a stand alone CTV app).

When it comes to tracking streaming audiences, there may be larger philosophical dispute at play in the TV industry. While Nielsen licenses data from cable companies that have set-top boxes, as well as ACR data from TV makers - it doesn’t license log file data from TV companies, or app makers themselves. Instead, media companies need to install an STK on their apps, which invokes some engineering costs, while also paying Nielsen to be in the Gauge and other monthly reports.

Some companies appear ok with this dynamic, and some don’t.

Does this matter at the end of the day? After all, neither the Gauge, nor Nielsen’s top ten lists, are really media planning tools (media agencies and brands don’t necessarily spend budgets using these tools). However, TV companies do want their streaming apps showing up in Nielsen’s own media planning tools - so the absence of an app like Vix could impact which budgets it gets a chance at.

Of course, the more that connected TV advertising becomes data-driven, the more that brands can use first-party data to find specific audiences via DSPs. Plus, there are alternative methods, such as working with a company like Sabio, which through its App Science business boasts of mobile app data that could connect brands with Vix (or other app users) via location or language settings data, for example.

Still, an individual media company’s app still needs to be considered by a brand or agency before getting a shot a being on a media plan, or having its audience targeted using specific first party data.

Regardless, it seems less than ideal that some major streamers have very public audience data at the ready, and some don’t.