How to market to US Hispanic customers with video

How big is the US Hispanic market?

About 70.1 million people, or 21% of the US population, as of July 1, 2025. That is the Census Bureau's Vintage 2025 population estimate, published in its Hispanic Heritage Month 2026 Facts for Features. Hispanics are the country's largest racial or ethnic minority, and 16 states have at least one million Hispanic residents, including California, Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois, Arizona and Georgia.

The number that matters for your ads is not the national total, though. It is who lives in the metro you sell to, and which Spanish they speak. The rest of this guide uses the Census Bureau's 2024 American Community Survey (ACS) 1-year estimates, the most recent detailed survey data, to answer that city by city. ACS figures are survey estimates with margins of error, and they count 68.0 million Hispanic residents in 2024, a slightly different measure from the population estimate above.

Which Spanish should my ads use in each city?

Use the Spanish of the largest Hispanic group in your metro, and make a second version if the second group is big. "Hispanic" covers dozens of national origins with different vocabulary, slang and accents. The table below comes from Census table B03001, Hispanic or Latino Origin by Specific Origin (ACS 2024 1-year). Shares of origin groups are percentages of each metro's Hispanic residents.

Two honest notes. VideoPronto offers seven varieties — Miami Cuban, Mexican, Colombian, Puerto Rican, Argentinian, Tejano and Spain — and none of them is Dominican or Salvadoran. In New York, Puerto Rican Spanish is the closest Caribbean variety we offer, and Dominican viewers will hear the difference. In the Washington, DC area, where Salvadorans lead, test a Mexican version and read the comments before you scale it. Nationally, Mexicans are 57.3% of the Hispanic population, Puerto Ricans 9.0% and Cubans 4.3% (same table), which is why a national campaign usually leads with Mexican Spanish while Florida campaigns do not.

Should I advertise in English, Spanish or both?

Both, in most large metros. Census data shows that most Hispanic residents speak Spanish at home, but a majority of those Spanish speakers also speak English "very well." A Spanish ad reaches the people an English ad misses, and it also signals to bilingual customers that you are a business that serves them. An English ad still reaches the Hispanic residents who speak only English.

The table is from Census table B16006, Language Spoken at Home by Ability to Speak English for the Hispanic or Latino population 5 years and over (ACS 2024 1-year).

How to read it for your business:

• Miami: nearly nine in ten Hispanic residents speak Spanish at home and 43.5% speak English less than very well. A Spanish ad is not optional here; it is half your market.
• New York, Houston, Los Angeles, Orlando: about three in four speak Spanish at home and roughly a third speak English less than very well. Run both languages from day one.
• San Antonio: almost half of Hispanic residents speak only English. A bilingual, Tejano-style ad that moves between English and Spanish can fit better than a Spanish-only one.

What cultural mistakes sink Spanish-language ads?

Most failures come from treating Spanish as a translation job instead of a separate audience. These are the ones to check before you spend:

• Word-for-word translation. English hooks built on idioms or puns fall flat in Spanish. Write the Spanish ad from the offer, not from the English script.
• The wrong variety's words. The bus is "guagua" to Cubans and Puerto Ricans, "camión" to Mexicans and "colectivo" to Argentines. "Vosotros" belongs only in Spain; in a Miami ad it sounds foreign.
• Guessing tú or usted. Choose the register on purpose for your audience and category instead of letting a translation tool pick it. In parts of Colombia "usted" is warm, not distant.
• A presenter who doesn't fit. The face, the setting and the accent should belong to the neighborhood you're targeting, not to a generic stock "Latino".
• Spanish ad, English funnel. If the landing page, the lead form and the person answering the phone switch to English, the Spanish ad paid for a lead you then lost.
• Fighting Spanglish where it's natural. In Miami and South Texas, people mix languages. A web address or brand name said in English at the end of a Spanish ad is normal, not a mistake.
• One ad for every Hispanic market. A Mexican-Spanish ad in Hialeah or a Cuban one in El Paso tells viewers it wasn't made for them.

How do I run English and Spanish ads side by side?

Make both from the same offer and brand, then give each language its own ad set so you can see which one earns cheaper leads. Keep the offer, the budget and the landing experience equal so the only real difference is the language. Then move money toward the winner and keep testing new hooks in both.

With VideoPronto you paste your website once and it builds a Brand Kit — logo, colors, offers, web address — that both languages use, so the end card and the offer are identical. The Spanish ad is written natively in the variety you pick, with a matching voice and presenter, not translated from the English one. Inspect First, a pre-purchase car inspection company in South Florida, runs VideoPronto UGC ads as Meta lead ads this way, in English and in Cuban Spanish from the same Brand Kit. Each ad costs about $3.30 in credits with no subscription (pricing), so making a second language, or a second variety, costs a few dollars rather than a second shoot.

For the product side, see AI video ads in Spanish (or the Spanish version, anuncios en video con IA en español). For writing the first three seconds in either language, see video ad hooks.