Estrella Media has teamed up with Comcast’s FreeWheel to reach more Hispanic viewers across the Spanish-language media company’s various connected TV platforms.
Specifically, FreeWheel said it will bolster direct and programmatic advertising throughout Estrella’s streaming inventory, including EstrellaTV, EstrellaNews, Cine EstrellaTV and Estrella Games. And Estrella is leveraging this partnership to further penetrate the AVOD and free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) space.
"Our passionate audience is watching more CTV than ever before,” stated René Santaella, Estrella Media’s chief digital and streaming officer. "We need to make sure they get an excellent free ad-supported experience surrounding the content they love. FreeWheel is helping our ad sales operation achieve better ROI on CTV so everyone wins.”
Indeed, streaming consumption is on the rise for Estrella, the company boasting its viewers watched over 1.33 billion minutes of streamed original content in November. Roughly one-third of that viewership came from CTV.
Estrella expanded its CTV distribution in August, introducing three linear channels for LG smart TVs. It’s also contributed content to The Roku Channel’s Espacio Latino, an aggregated collection of free Spanish-language programming.
Estrella’s move to enhance streaming advertising speaks to how more Hispanic audiences are shifting towards OTT platforms. Earlier this year, Horowitz Research found 38% of Hispanic households subscribe only to streaming services rather than traditional MVPDs. What’s more, Hispanic viewers are consuming more Spanish-language programming than in prior years.
Estrella isn’t the only media company making headway in Spanish-language streaming. Adsmovil in September launched Nuestra.TV, a free service targeting bilingual and Hispanic audiences in the U.S. And TelevisaUnivision introduced both its free and paid tiers of ViX, touting a variety of original content in Spanish.
"Estrella is seeing significant growth with the important U.S. Hispanic market across its CTV audiences,” stated FreeWheel CRO Katy Loria. She noted as audiences continue to fragment, it’s crucial for content providers like Estrella to scale viewership across CTV.
“We're thrilled to be a key partner to help the company drive and monetize this business,” Loria added.
For FreeWheel’s part, the advanced advertising unit has focused on boosting programmatic advertising, unveiling in October unified yield capabilities for programmatic campaigns. FreeWheel is also working with Fox to enhance the company’s direct advertising strategy.