Spending Trends of America’s Leading Advertisers
First-ever side-by-side comparison of general market and Hispanic media expenditures of America’s top 250 advertisers

Miami, Florida, April 21, 2004 – The first-ever side-by-side comparison of actual measured media expenditures for America’s top 250 corporate advertisers was released today by the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies (AHAA).

The list provides comparisons among the top 250 advertisers, ranked by combined spending in general market and Hispanic market television and print media, to reveal the percentage of overall spending invested in these segments of Hispanic media. Of the 250 companies on the list, 61 companies are spending nothing in Hispanic print and TV while 49 are spending less than 1 percent in these outlets. Other trends in the list include:

• Shorter-term focused, trade advertisers with front-line cash registers such as retailers seem closest to recognizing the power of Hispanic wallets and have allocated the highest percentages to Hispanic advertising.
  
• Manufacturers of goods and headquarters of services are still generally under-investing in the Hispanic market.
  
• America’s top 250 advertisers, particularly those in the 101-250 tier, led the increase in overall investment in Hispanic media advertising.
  
• Companies like Pepsico, Sears Roebuck, U.S. Government, Wal-Mart, Payless Shoesource, McDonald’s, SABMiller, Texas Pacific Group, AT&T, State Farm Mutual, Colgate-Palmolive, Radio Shack, FoodMaker, Inc., Southwest Airlines, Domino’s Pizza, Heineken, Bally Total Fitness, American Legacy Foundation, AARP, AMR, Avon and Interbrew invested the highest percentages of their ad budgets in Hispanic media.

“AHAA’s goal in releasing this list is to provide the most accurate list yet available of America’s top advertisers in the Hispanic market and to provide a benchmarking tool for corporations to use when they consider their advertising strategies and budget allocations,” said Aida Levitan, PhD, president, Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies.

All the data used for this list was compiled from TNS Media Intelligence/CMR. The data specifications were developed by the Santiago Solutions Group in conjunction with AHAA and TNSMI/CMR. Measured print and television media expenditures were compiled for the top 671 U.S. advertisers. Measured media expenditures were gathered by media type (e.g., Hispanic TV Networks), not by individual media properties (e.g., Univision) and from the same geographic markets for both Hispanic and general media sources including:

Hispanic Media
Network TV
National Cable TV
Spot TV (19 markets)
Consumer Magazines
Newspapers (9 markets)

General Market Media
Network TV
National Cable TV
Spot TV (19 markets)
Consumer Magazines
Newspapers (9 markets)

In addition to this list, AHAA released a comprehensive study of spending trends in the past four years. This list and study were both released during AHAA’s 16th semi-annual conference in Miami.

About AHAA
The Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies is the national organization of firms that specialize in marketing to the nation’s 35.3 million Hispanic consumers, the most rapidly growing segment of the American population. AHAA promotes the strength of the Hispanic marketing and advertising industry to the private and public sectors.

AHAA agencies offer a unique blend of cultural understanding, market intelligence, proven experience and professionalism that deliver Hispanic market success for clients. AHAA helps organizations gain market share, increase revenue and grow profits by building the bridges and delivering the messages to reach America’s Hispanic consumers, who together have an estimated buying power of $561 billion.

About Santiago Solutions Group – www.santiagosolutionsgroup.com:
Santiago Solutions Group offers leading consumer-focused companies experienced corporate-wide strategic advice and project management for mining opportunities in the U.S. multi-cultural markets. To attain optimal bottom-line results for clients, Santiago Solutions Group combines vision, integrated strategy, deep cultural insights, market planning and product innovation with operational readiness evaluations followed by hands-on help to close internal gaps across functional areas which tend to impede in-culture marketing efforts from fully succeeding.

About TNS Media Intelligence – www.tns-mi.com:
TNS Media Intelligence in the U.S. is the leading provider of strategic advertising and marketing information - across media, brand, industry and market. The company's tracking technologies collect occurrence and expenditure data on more than 2.1 million brands spanning 20 media. The U.S. headquarters are located in New York City with sales locations in major markets across the country.

 For press inquiries, please contact Elinor Kinnier, 703-610-0204, ekinnier@cmgresults.com