By: Della de Lafuente ImpreMedia has signed on to provide live video streaming and Spanish translation for an online series of dialogues with presidential candidates hosted by the social network MySpace and youth cable network MTV.
The Hispanic media company said Thursday it will broadcast the live streaming video of a talk with Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) on Oct. 29 via its Latino youth entertainment portal LaVibra.com.
?We want to reach young Hispanics who would like to speak directly to the candidates in Spanish, understand the issues, and what the candidates are saying,? ImpreMedia Digital CEO Arturo Duran told Marketing y Medios.
ImpreMedia is on board to provide the live streamling and Spanish translation for the entire series of dialogues with the candidates, all of who are confirmed to participate in the program in the coming months, Duran said.
During the one-hour discussion, Hispanic viewers will be able to submit questions in Spanish to Obama in real time via LaVibra.com. An onsite translator will then translate the senator?s responses back to the online audience in Spanish.
Helping to give young Latinos the information they need to make decisions about the issues expected to bubble up going into the 2008 presidential election is the main reason for the media company?s involvement, Duran said.
?Our hope is to increase voter participation in the Hispanic community by providing news, analysis and as many different voices and opinions to consider,? he added, noting the growing politic influence that surfaced among Latinos this past year with the immigration debate.
The political clout of young Hispanics is already getting attention because some 50,000 Hispanics turn 18 every month in the United States and 87 percent of them are eligible to vote, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.
From a strategic perspective, ImpreMedia recognizes ?the golden opportunity to grab this audience of young people and get our brand in front of them,? said Duran. ?LaVibra is a very youth-oriented brand and it?s an opportunity to get across the fact that we?re a serious brand in terms of bringing them issues that matter to them.?
ImpreMedia is investing an estimated $500,000 to provide the live streaming and Spanish translation for the series, which includes promoting upcoming programs with online banner ads and full-page print ads in all its Spanish-language newspapers. Print ads touting the Obama talk appeared today and Oct. 21 in Sunday editions of La Opini?n in Los Angeles and in El Diario, in New York City, Duran said.
Ad spending in the Spanish-language youth market has reached $1.7 billion so far this year, compared with $2.9 billion for the same time period in 2006, according to Nielsen Monitor-Plus.
The one-hour discussion with Obama is the second in the presidential dialogue series and will take place on the campus of Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. An audience of university students will have the opportunity to ask the Democratic candidate questions about the issues that matter to them most. MTV News correspondents Gideon Yago and Sway Calloway, and WashingtonPost.com political reporter Chris Cillizza, will serve as moderators.
The first talk with Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards of North Carolina, along with archived sessions featuring Obama and other presidential candidates, can be watched online at LaVibra.com. The dialogues will be available on the site until next summer's political conventions when both political parties select their nominees for president.
MySpace and MTV hope to invite back the Democratic and Republican candidates on the ballot for talks just prior to the 2008 presidential election, Duran said.
ImpreMedia anticipates a bump in Web traffic to its LaVibra site from the Obama talk, even though Democratic frontrunner Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York holds a commanding lead in the polls among Hispanic voters.
Traffic to the LaVibra site jumped 40 percent on Sept. 27 when Edwards kicked off the presidential dialogue series at the University of New Hampshire, with roughly 25,000 unique visitors streaming the live talk with Edwards, according to estimates provided by ImpreMedia.
MySpace, host of the presidential dialogues, said last week that the Edwards discussion has been streamed some 350,000 times since it debuted online last month.
ImpreMedia expects interest in the presidential dialogues to build as key Hispanic-dominated states hold primary elections and as the presidential race tightens.
?The worse thing that can happen is that people remain silent,? Duran said. ?Hispanics won?t have the right to complain about the state of the country if they don?t exercise their voting rights.?
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