In recent years, Hispanic content has rapidly gained popularity worldwide, presenting a prime opportunity to develop alliances and create new revenue streams within the market.

Latin American broadcasters are eagerly seeking ways to expand their global reach and distribute their content into new markets, as well as deliver content to Latin America from global sources. With strong partners throughout the worlad, Latin American content programmers can leverage the infrastructure and new technologies needed to distribute content ,locally and globally. 

Growing Demand for Hispanic Content Worldwide
The influx of Latin Americans migrating to other areas of the world, particularly the U.S., and the subsequent demand for Hispanic content, these are the main driving factors for the rapid growth of such programming, creating opportunities for businesses to align with broadcasters and content programmers in the region. Social and cultural shifts of the Hispanic market have a significant affect on the future of the U.S. economy, and it is vital for companies to embrace the opportunity to monetize Hispanic content being produced.

Currently, the U.S. is a top exporter of Hispanic content to the world. A growing number of U.S. and European companies are eager to develop content for distribution into Latin America, which is embraced by the market’s need for international content. Latin American players are seeking better ways to distribute richer content and improve viewer experience, while seeking new revenue streams. Programmers are also looking for partners that provide distribution and satellite services across the globe.

Challenges Faced Within the Market 
Service providers must understand each region’s growing sector needs and meet those demands with technological advances, all the while acknowledging the variables within the target markets. Latin America extends across a huge geographic territory, which means defining key, focused strategies to develop each market are more than essential. Language and cultural barriers, rapidly changing needs and relationship building within a closed community are factors that cannot be ignored. 

Local presence and expertize in each territory that is lead by a dedicated executive team that understands and is immersed in the culture, has strong relationships within the media community—these are among the best to methods to manage the cultural and language barriers that exist between Latin America and other areas of the world. When working within a market such as Latin America, local representatives should be cultivated who can provide insight in building business relationships, who speak the language and understand the client’s business and immediate needs, are key acquisitions. This helps to eliminate that initial barrier of not fully understanding the culture as well as opens doors to garner additional relationships and to uncover new opportunities and strategies to monetize content. 

The emergence of exporting and importing Latin American content offers tremendous opportunities in spite of the complexities. Local infrastructure is rapidly evolving, posing the need to be vigilant with the changing world of consumer needs. Finding the correct applications to meet the needs of a specific market, as well as seeking new media opportunities, can be quite challenging, but also creates long standing, business relationships. 

Latin America is rather a closed community that can make it difficult to penetrate the market—cultivating local resources is essential. Providers should create strategic alliances with local companies to establish a presence and credibility in each media sector. Content programmers and service providers are also seeking a global presence where new opportunities can be acquired after gaining market knowledge through local “know-how.”

RR Media’s Strategy for Entering the Market 
RR Media has embraced the LATAM region’s challenges and is strategically pursuing opportunities to provide service offerings to the rapidly growing Latin America and Hispanic markets. A key element to RR Media’s global strategy is to ensure the correct team is in place for each region. This includes seeking out and hiring individuals who are immersed and understand the culture, as well as possess strong backgrounds in broadcast technology.

In order to strengthen its global presence, RR Media invested in a strategy that included individuals that were the best fit for each geographic location, including Latin America. These additions to the strategic team add depth and strength in multicultural content and digital media, enabling RR Media to build and establish strong relationships within the regions.

In addition to developing a team that can integrate with the market, RR Media has established an office in Miami, which acts as a melting pot for the Latin American and Hispanic markets. Acclimating to the culture and staying on top of key market trends assures a potential partner that RR Media is invested in the relationship and understands their unique cultural, geographic and service needs. 

While RR Media is new to the region, the company is rapidly establishing credibility and a strong presence through its alliance with Cisneros Media, and RR Media’s pushes forward to ensure consistent visibility with key, local players. RR Media is focused on helping satellite broadcasters to reinvent their offerings by addressing any immediate needs. Such affords new opportunities, which will ultimately drive new revenue streams. Bringing fresh ideas from international markets and showcasing those capabilities, this helps to illustrate how others are benefiting and monetizing content in other markets.

RR Media is motivating additional revenue streams and expanding current distribution channels by tapping into the region’s plans to import and export content to the growing U.S. Hispanic market, as well as the demand for Hispanic content across the globe.  Building a strong team and a strategic market plan for each target market has enabled RR Media to enter into territories that are on the forefront of growth and success across all international boarders.

To learn more about RR Media (formerly known as RRsat), visit: http://www.rrmedia.com/

About the author
Mr. Neyra leads the Latin American and Hispanic markets sector through the commercial services and development division of RR Media.

Case in Point:

Aligning with Cisneros Media  
A recent partnership with Cisneros Media is a first for RR Media in Latin America and signifies the company’s commitment to broaden local capabilities throughout the Americas.

The relationship provides RR Media with credibility and the ability to establish a presence, while Cisneros gains a secure and reliable technical platform to deliver its content around the world, launch new channels and expand into new territories. 

RR Media’s ability to provide Cisneros with full playout and global distribution services, maximizing and optimizing return on assets. 

“RR Media’s high standards and quality service enables us to exceed the growing necessities of our clients and the demands of our viewers for more variety of content, expanded reach, greater accessibility and viewing experience,” said Jonathan Blum, President of Cisneros Media. “They also offer us the capability of efficiently managing and maximizing the potential of our content, greatly improving our workflow.”