According to Internet World Stats, over the past seven years:

Internet usage in South America has grown by 393.2%

Internet usage in Central America has grown by 708 %

Internet usage in the Caribbean has grown by 939.8% 

This growth is reflected in SES offering the second conference that focuses exclusively on Latino markets - SES Latino 2007.

Barbara Coll, (a.k.a. WebMama), (a.k.a. my boss for ten hours every week) will be presenting at Search Engine Strategies Latino 2007, and thinks that people are missing out on this huge Latino market because they are not optimizing their Web sites with this growing economic power in mind.

According to WebMama, the buying power of Latinos in the United States today stands at more than $900 billion and advertisers should be tapping into that.

One challenge for American marketers is do they provide one generic Spanish translated site, or do the provide translations for each Hispanic speaking top level domain?  That is - should they worry about having separate, and individual, culturally specific sites, for Brazil, Mexico, Argentina etc.?
If you’re interested, spend a few minutes completing a survey on Barbara’s blog: you never know, the answers may inspire you to think different.

So, just what is the scope of the Latino market?

I don’t really know – all I know is Goog is looking for people to sell ads for their new operations center in Buenos Aires…and I guess they, of all people, know where the money is.

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