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ADOTAS Conversations: Mark Lopez, Publisher, AOL Latino

Written on
July 31st 2006
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by Kiran Aditham  |
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In terms of the small businesses themselves, are you talking like online startups, are they offline brick and mortar operations, or are they both?

Most of them honestly are brick and mortar. They are really, truly small businesses, they’re both “mom and pops” and also more established small businesses. This year, too, we’re really focusing as well on people that are thinking of starting. So people that have entrepreneurial spirit to really start a small business, but they haven’t taken the steps to actually do it. So we want to make sure that they feel they have the information there and they feel empowered to actually do it, and take the risk.

Just speaking of the businesses, is there a specific market that you tend to see a lot of? Do you see a lot of startup in entertainment, or is it finance, is there a broad mix?

The startups are in all kinds of industries. We have small businesses that are all the way from construction, retail, to marketing services—the whole gamut. So, the depth of it is really wide and that’s what makes it interesting. This year we started, we actually launched a new feature which is a directory of businesses. So everybody who registers on Mi Negocio has the opportunity to sign up their business for the directory of businesses. So now, we’re seeing the nature of the small businesses that access the site.

Have the stats significantly changed since last year in terms of, say, 63% of online Hispanics aged 18-34 want their own business, or have you noticed a shift upwards? Has it stayed the same?

I think the amount has always been there. I don’t think we’ve noticed significant changes on that. As you can see, 63% is a pretty high number and the amount that we’ve seen is the amount in terms of traffic, traffic registration, and just overall interest has kept on increasing. So, those are the things that we see on the site and what we’re doing too is making it a lot more broadband-oriented with video and strengthening some of the broadband components that we have on the site.

What is AOL Latino’s mission statement, so to speak?

As far as with AOL Latino, I think we’re committed to working with partners for breakthrough ideas. A lot of what we do on the marketing side with partners like Ford is come up with ideas that go well beyond our “media buy” and Mi Negocio just really proves the point when it comes to breakthrough initiatives, things that have never been done before that the marketing watchers use to reference programs on the interactive space. So, we do a lot of that with Ford and other clients. And really what makes us unique in the marketplace is our ability to come up with extremely creative ideas that have never been done before and then execute them.

What was the impetus for teaming with Ford? Was it a company you were specifically looking at?

In terms of Mi Negocio, I think Ford had a unique interest in the space and we were able to work with them. Talking about other examples of just unique ideas that we’re taking to market with one of their other brands, Mercury, we just released the Short Film Festival, the first short film festival targeted to a Hispanic market online. We released that a couple of months ago. The goal is getting promising Hispanic filmmakers up to the front and allowing them to gain access to Hollywood. That’s another example of something that we’re doing that’s a breakthrough initiative.

So, going back to the earlier question, what’s coming up next for you guys? What projects are you working on?

As you see on the DOW market, the media is evolving and the interactive market is evolving as well. We’re working on a number of ideas across our programming landscape. We really focus on broadband for this market, given that the penetration is so high. So you’ll see a lot of announcements on the regional programming front that will hit this market, beyond just extensions that we’re doing of our general market franchises.



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