The New Mainstream Consumer: Multicultural and Digital
New Report by ThinkNow and The Center for Multicultural Science Finds Companies Underinvest in Digital Ad Spend to Reach Multicultural Consumers
BURBANK, Calif., Oct. 16, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- By 2044, the U.S. will be a multicultural majority with 50% or more representing Hispanic, African-American or Asian populations, according to the U.S. Census. A new report released today by ThinkNow, a technology driven cultural insights agency in partnership with The Center for Multicultural Science and MAGNA, finds that brands are underinvesting in digital advertising spend to reach multicultural consumers. For the first time, The Multicultural Digital Report 2018 quantifies digital advertising spend by ethnicity and race. Historically, U.S. digital spend was measured by language for the Latino population, and had never been reported for African-Americans and Asians. Digital ad spend was simply rolled into one overall number—until now. The report suggests that brands will need to invest more in digital and with multicultural consumers to help drive growth.
"Brands aren't keeping pace with the changing multicultural population and its preferences to interact in an authentic and culturally appropriate way," says Mario X. Carrasco, co-founder and principal, ThinkNow. "Companies need to adapt more quickly using new research tools to reach multicultural consumers such as Gen Z who is increasing its purchasing power every year."
Key findings of report include the following:
- Digital ad sales reached 52% of total ad sales in 2018
- By 2023, digital ad sales are projected to reach almost 70%
- Latinos are 18% of the population and received only 14% of digital ad spend
- Non-Hispanic whites are 60% of the population and received 65% of digital ad spend
- Projected growth rates of the U.S. population who are two or more races is 11% in 2018-23
- 36% of Latinos prefer Netflix to consume TV programming—highest of any group
"It is important that advertisers and marketers understand how much of their investments are reaching the new mainstream—Latinos, African-Americans and Asians. The U.S. is and will continue to be more and more multicultural and publishing digital spend by ethnicity and race is hugely important, moving forward," says Dr. Jake Beniflah, executive director, The Center for Multicultural Science.
The report includes a number of empirical studies supporting in-culture marketing, digital and social media usage for Asian consumers (not measured by ComScore), and new data on digital usage across all consumer groups. Consumer data was collected using ThinkNow ConneKt, an audience planning and segmentation tool for the multicultural market.
The Multicultural Digital Report 2018 is available for download here http://campaigns.thinknowresearch.com/downloads/thinknow-multicultural-digital-report-2018.html.
About ThinkNow
ThinkNow is a technology driven cultural insights agency. ThinkNow enables companies and government agencies to discover the cultural drivers that influence consumer decisions. We provide insight solutions to help organizations thrive in a changing demographic environment. ThinkNow also owns and operates one of the largest and most representative Hispanic online panels in the industry, DigaYGane.com, used to service our own research as well as provide samples to the leading market research companies in the world. Learn more at www.thinknowresearch.com.
About The Center for Multicultural Science
The Center for Multicultural Science is the first non-profit 501c(3), non-partisan think tank in the United States dedicated to bridge the gap between leading corporations and academic researchers in multicultural marketing. The mission of the Center for Multicultural Science is to provide world-class thought leadership in multicultural marketing with the goals of leading and renewing industry thinking and practice. The Center for Multicultural Science conducts, supports and disseminates research on multicultural marketing in the US and abroad. Visit https://multicultural-science.org/.
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SOURCE ThinkNow
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