TelevisaUnivision has scored its first national NFL broadcast—and it’s the big one. The Hispanic-targeted media company will air next year’s Super Bowl in Spanish in partnership with the NFL and CBS Sports (which has the game in English). 

Announced at TelevisaUnivision’s upfront presentation Tuesday morning, it noted the 2024 Big Game will mark its first time airing the major event nationally in the U.S. Its sports division, TUDN, however, has over five decades of experience producing Super Bowl coverage in Mexico.

TelevisaUnivision’s first priority is to sell ad inventory around its major moments, which aside from the Super Bowl also include the Latin Grammys and soccer. Where the media company’s pitch is unique from its Big Five peers is the need for brands to interface further with its target Hispanic audience, particularly as advertisers increasingly make moves to strategize media budgets around inclusive investments. A primary way TelevisaUnivison is doing this is through branded social content.

Branded content is king

“Our audience wants to see themselves in what they see onscreen, not just the stars and better representation in ads—that should be baseline,” said Dan Riess, executive VP and chief growth officer at TelevisaUnvision. “What is the difference-maker for lots of brands is that [Hispanic audiences] see themselves, they see their contributions to America, they see the positive force that they’re bringing to bear and that’s something that I don't think as many brands have thought of that is really what makes the biggest difference. So, [branded social partnerships] are discussed in the upfront—not entirely, but many of those deals are done because they’re done alongside the partnership with a tentpole.”

TelevisaUnivision’s branded content business—which includes everything from bespoke social campaigns to highly produced documentaries and series via its Así Studios launched in spring 2022—has brought in over $100 million, the company told Ad Age, adding that it’s grown over 30% year over year. Over the past year, 17 brands including T-Mobile, State Farm and Expedia have partnered with TelevisaUnivision to make influencer campaigns, tapping 30 Hispanic influencers curated by the media company’s “in-culture team of experts.”

More news: Creators are becoming brands’ social media strategists

TelevisaUnivision does not profit from content created by influencers or distributed via the creators’ owned channels, according to the company. Rather, those costs are passed directly from brand to creator.

Five years ago, “the upfront marketplace was, ‘We’ll take the money in, we’ll work on the price and the volume and we’ll list out the things that you might want to do as an advertiser. We'll figure the rest out later,’” said Riess. “Now, [dealmaking] is pretty specific about the all-encompassing nature of these deals, what platforms, what partnerships, what data usage—all of that is getting worked out in the upfront timeframe. It allows for real innovation, and in a couple of weeks you move the industry forward faster.”

In preparation for upfront negotiations, one media buyer told Ad Age that advertisers are looking for ways to increase the value of their spend this year as client budgets have tightened and spending is done over time rather than committed all at once. This year, the buyer’s clients are focused on “what we get outside of the pod—the integrations, the sponsorships, the value buys.”

And branded content has been a recurring theme throughout upfront pushes from media companies including Disney, AMC Networks and Roku, as well as brands creating content themselves in greater numbers.

Data, data, data

It’s all about the data these days—both the data coming in and going out.

Media companies have upped their first-party data offerings to advertisers over the past years in the midst of privacy crackdowns, as well as growth in targeting capabilities. Married to the greater suites of inventory and bespoke partnerships peddled by media companies are their datasets, which allow advertisers greater insights into where their target audiences are consuming content.

In TelevisaUnision’s upfront presentation, Donna Speciale, president of U.S. ad sales and marketing, said that over 150 advertisers have adopted its Hispanic household data graph. According to the company, the data graph now covers nearly 100% of the U.S. Hispanic population.

A major driver in adopting new measurement providers has been the historic undercounting of multicultural audiences by panel-based data, a topic Speciale has been particularly vocal on within the media industry. Speciale said onstage that the Hispanic audience is 29% bigger than is currently measured. “How did we get that figure? Because Nielsen just told us,” she said.

“Dollars are not being put into this [multicultural] marketplace because of the lack of representation” in measurement, said Speciale at an event for the Joint Industry Committee last month. “We have been looking at the big data from Nielsen and the numbers are enormous. That’s because we’re playing catch-up for decades of invisibility in this area. We can’t wait any longer.”

Last month, Nielsen announced it was reversing its plans to make deals on its big data set in favor of its Media Rating Council-accredited panel-based data, which captures audience reports from a limited 41,000 household panel. Still, the company will offer a big data addition to its panel data.

On the TelevisaUnivision upfront stage, Speciale gave Nielsen the spotlight, imploring advertisers to lean into its big data product. “There’s finally a currency where Hispanics and their media behaviors are accurately measured,” said Speciale.