Canela Media Announces Zully, a Brand-New Micro-Series Mobile App, and the Expansion of Its Canela Audience Solutions Data Offering During 2026 Upfront Event

The Company Also Unveils a New Culture Cohorts Study, Culturally Relevant Content Pipeline,
and New Features for Club Canela

NEW YORK, May 12, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Canela Media, leading technology and innovation multicultural media company, showcased continued momentum, innovation, and scale in reaching U.S. Hispanic audiences at its 2026 Upfront Lunch in New York City. With more than 60 million monthly active users across its ecosystem, Canela Media is positioned as a strategic business partner for brands seeking to connect with today's culture-forward, streaming-native, and digitally fluent U.S. Hispanic audience.

Zully, The First Micro-Series App Built For Today's Drama-Loving Audiences
Canela Media introduced Zully, a new vertical micro-series app built for today's drama-loving audiences. Launching in Fall 2026, Zully blends AI-powered and live-action originals into short-form, mobile-first storytelling designed for discovery, sharing, and binge-viewing. The platform features original IP created by diverse creators and storytellers, with content that moves seamlessly between English, Spanish, and Spanglish, reflecting how younger, culturally fluent audiences naturally consume media today. With younger demographics skewing increasingly diverse, Zully is uniquely positioned to lead with the U.S. Hispanic market while serving drama fans across every background. For brands, Zully unlocks new opportunities through custom micro-series, integrated ad solutions, and 100% share of voice within premium storytelling environments, extending campaigns across Zully, social platforms, and YouTube. Built on Canela Media's data, creative, and distribution strengths, Zully represents the next evolution of branded storytelling, culturally authentic, scalable, and designed for how audiences watch now.

"Zully is a natural extension of everything we've built at Canela Media over the past seven years," said Isabel Rafferty-Zavala, CEO and Co-Founder of Canela Media. "We've spent years deeply understanding how audiences express culture, move across platforms, and connect with stories, insights rooted in our leadership in the U.S. Hispanic market, where younger, diverse viewers are shaping what drama looks like for everyone. Zully is backed by that experience, combining our storytelling knowhow, audience intelligence, and advanced AI workflows for content creation and distribution scale to introduce a new platform that will bring innovation to how micro-series are developed and served to today's drama lovers."

Canela Audience Solutions Expands its Data Offering Beyond its Ecosystem
Through Canela Audience Solutions (CAS), brands can now leverage our deterministic first-party data across the full advertising ecosystem. Advertisers can activate CAS audiences through direct and programmatic channels, with support across CTV, digital, retail media networks, and social platforms, backed by broad SSP connectivity. For deeper data integrations, Canela's Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) offering allows brands to append Hispanic segment eligibility directly into their own planning tools and identity frameworks, with weekly updates to support targeting, modeling, and measurement.

CAS is built on 35 million proprietary IDs to create custom, scalable audience segments, offering brands access to unique audiences that are difficult to reach elsewhere. 34% of Canela Media's audience does not watch other Spanish-language platforms, and more than one-third is not reachable through other OTT services, regardless of language.

Unmatched Scale, Engagement, and Growth
Canela Media continues to see rapid growth across its platforms, including Canela.TV, social, and partner networks. The company reported significant year-over-year increases in audience engagement, including substantial gains in monthly active users (+97%), time spent (+80%), distribution (2x), and social following (+58%), demonstrating both scale and deep audience connection.

Canela Media's Culture Cohorts Proprietary Study
Canela Media unveiled new proprietary insights into today's U.S. Hispanic audience through its Culture Cohorts Study, revealing a young, culture‑forward, bilingual audience whose identity is shaped by how culture is expressed, not by language or acculturation alone. The study identifies six distinct cultural cohorts across Canela's ecosystem, underscoring that while cultural pride is nearly universal, engagement with content and advertising varies meaningfully by mindset and motivation.

Premium Content and Cultural Storytelling
At the core of Canela Media's offering is its premium content ecosystem, including over 35,000 hours of programming across Canela.TV, FAST channels, and digital platforms. The company continues to invest in Canela Originals, lifestyle programming, social-first content, and culturally relevant storytelling. Canela Studios, the company's in-house production arm, delivers end-to-end creative solutions, from branded content and influencer partnerships to AI-driven production, enabling brands to integrate seamlessly into trusted content environments.

Verano de Gloria 2026: Fan-Centric Sports Content
Looking ahead to the 2026 FIFA World Cup, Canela Media is focused on delivering the fan-centric coverage audiences are looking for through original content, creator-led social activations, Club Canela challenges, and cross-platform storytelling that bring fans closer to the action and the moments that matter most. Initiatives like Verano de Gloria and originals such as El Quinto Partido, hosted by Julián Gil, tap into the passion and emotion surrounding fútbol while creating authentic opportunities for brands to connect with fandom. Canela Media has also extended its exclusive partnership with FutbolSites, strengthening its ability to deliver scale, frequency, and culturally relevant sports content wherever U.S. Hispanic fans engage.

Club Canela Offers New Features
Following on the success of Canela Media's audience reward program Club Canela, the company has introduced even more features for brands and users. Within Club Canela, users will be able to access enhanced surveys, order custom merchandise and get rewarded for referring friends. For brands, everything within Club Canela is available for sponsorship and fully customizable.

With its combination of scale, precision, innovation, and cultural authenticity, Canela Media continues to redefine how brands engage with U.S. Hispanic audiences.

"At Canela Media, we are continuing to build an ecosystem designed for how today's Hispanic audiences live, stream, and engage," said Philippe Guelton, Global President, Canela Media. "Our combination of premium content, first-party deterministic data, on-going innovation and culturally relevant storytelling allows brands to connect authentically and drive measurable impact at scale."

The presenters at Canela Media's 2026 Upfront Lunch included Canela Media's executives Isabel Rafferty-Zavala, CEO and Co-Founder of Canela Media, Philippe Guelton, Global President, Andrés Rincón, Senior Vice President of Sales, Samantha Huggins, VP of Enterprise Accounts, Paula Baldwin, VP of Brand Partnerships, and Melissa Green VP of Sales & Data Solutions.

About Canela Media
Canela Media is a leading innovation and technology-driven company that offers a portfolio of audience solutions consisting of Canela.TV, Canela Audience Solutions, Club Canela and Canela Studios providing scale and breakthrough offerings to reach U.S. Hispanic audiences through relevant content, with precision and accuracy. Canela Media's free streaming platform, Canela.TV, provides audiences with culturally relevant and authentic content on-demand (VOD) and through its Live Channels across all verticals: Canela Music, Canela Kids, Canela Deportes, and also boasts an extensive library of Novelas and Mexican classics films. Canela Studios, Canela Media's in-house creative and production studio, offers brands seamless creative services and branded content solutions as well as developing and producing several Canela Originals. Club Canela, Canela Media's breakthrough first in-app streaming rewards program of its kind, provides brands with innovative and exclusive engagement opportunities while rewarding audiences for watching content on the Canela.TV app. Canela Media's proprietary and exclusive data solution, Canela Audience Solutions, is a best-in-class OTT-first data product delivering advanced audience targeting with more scale, more accuracy, and, ultimately, more precision.

Canela Media's extensive reach across premium OTT partners and Spanish-language sites, coupled with its proprietary data, empowers brands to reach highly engaged, customized, Hispanic audiences with precision, both within and beyond Canela Media's ecosystem.

For more information, visit: http://www.CanelaMedia.com

SOURCE Canela Media