Breakfast briefing
Washington, DC · August 13, 2026

The DMV Latino Decision Map

The next greatLatino city isthe one you'resitting in.

Bigger and richer than you think. Three rules to win it. A map you can use Monday.

Presented by Andrea Chacón — El Tiempo Latino

01 — The city changed

Part 01The city changed while you were looking at it

Without Latinos,the DMV didn't grow.

Of the 260,848 residents the region added from 2019 to 2024, 137,640 were Latino — more than half. And DC, which lost population overall, kept growing in exactly one group.

DC's Hispanic market grew +119% from 2010 to 2020 — the fastest of any major US metro (Selig Center).

0%

of all DMV growth

came from Latinos, 2019–2024

0

Latinos in the core DMV

19.3% of the region today

Population growth 2019–2024 · total vs Latino

Source: US Census Bureau, ACS 1-year 2019 + 2024, six core DMV jurisdictions.

01 — The city changed

Part 01The city changed while you were looking at it

In ten years, 1 in 4 DMVresidents will be Latino.

And the engine is structural, not just migration: this population is young and renewing itself. The market of 2035 is taking algebra in a DMV classroom right now.

First bank accounts, first season tickets, first memberships, first mortgages: all land within the next 15 years.

0

Latinos under 18

30% of all DMV Latinos

0

kids in public schools

every major district above the US average

4:1

kids vs seniors

growth locked in for decades

Latino share of the DMV · actual + our projection

Method: linear extension of the ACS 2019–2024 trend across the six core jurisdictions. Our estimate — not an official Census projection. Age structure: ACS B01001I.

02 — A market of its own

Part 02…and it's not the Latino market you know

Forget the national playbook.This market has its own passport.

Nationally, "Latino" means Mexican-majority. Not here. The DMV is Salvadoran-led, half foreign-born, and rewriting itself fast — Venezuelans nearly tripled in five years.

A Cinco de Mayo plan speaks to 11% of this market.

0

Salvadoran

the DMV's #1 origin

0

foreign-born

vs 32% US Latino average

Top origins, share of 832K DMV Latinos

Who's growing, 2019 → 2024

▶ @eltiempolatino
LC Pupusas · La Cosecha, DC

Free Pupusas Day · our feed

Source: US Census ACS 1-year 2024, table B03001, six core jurisdictions. Foreign-born: B05003I.

02 — A market of its own

Part 02…and it's not the Latino market you know

Bilingual isn't a segment.It's the mainstream.

The old model — "Latino equals Spanish speaker, translate the English ad" — is wrong here. The majority code-switches all day, on the same phone, sometimes inside the same sentence.

And when content is culturally theirs, Spanish wins: 70% of our engaged readers browse with devices set to Spanish (GA4, 90 days). Build Spanish-leading bilingual — not translated English.

0

bilingual proficient

Spanish at home AND strong English

4 in 5

live in Spanish, or both

Spanish-dominant + bilingual = 79.7%

How 762K DMV Latinos (5+) actually communicate

429KBilingual proficient · 56.4%

170KSpanish-dom.

155KEnglish-only

← Spanish or both: 79.7% — the market lives here

Montgomery leads on bilingual (62%). Prince George's has the largest Spanish-dominant share (33%). DC, the most English-only (30%). One metro, three registers — the map tells you which one to speak.

Source: US Census ACS, language spoken at home × English proficiency, population 5+, six core jurisdictions (B16006). ETL signal: GA4 device language, engaged sessions, bot-filtered.

02 — A market of its own

Part 02…and it's not the Latino market you know

New to the system — so they build around it.

Three frictions you won't find in a national playbook — and the three responses this market invented. Every one is a category opportunity, if you arrive as a guide instead of a vendor.

Friction 01 · Credit

The system prices "new" as risk

26%DMV Latino mortgage denial — ~2× the non-Hispanic-white rate

+1.8ptshistorical dealer markup on Hispanic auto loans (CFPB)

Their responseTransparent, bilingual finance wins the first relationship.

Friction 02 · Work

Job ladders don't transfer

60K+Hispanic-owned businesses in Maryland alone — 9th in the US

+10%/yrgrowth in MD & VA — restaurants, retail, construction, services

Their responseThey build their own — sell to it, and through it.

Friction 03 · Health

Care habits travel from home

27%uninsured across the DMV Latino population

coverage ≠ carepreventive utilization lags even where coverage exists

Their responseBilingual navigation — not awareness — closes the gap.

Sources: HMDA (mortgage denials, DMV), CFPB (auto-loan markup, historical), SBA/Census ABS via state counts, ACS S2701 (uninsured). The friction is the brief: this audience rewards whoever removes it.

02 — A market of its own

Part 02…and it's not the Latino market you know

Six jurisdictions. Six different ‘personas.’

District of Columbia

The Established Professional

88,430 Latinos · 12.6%
$121K — out-earns the city itself

Montgomery · MD

The Bilingual Middle-Class Household

234,891 Latinos — the melting pot
Bilingual rate at 62%

Prince George's · MD

The Working-Class Central American Family

231,348 — 41% of DMV Salvadorans
33% Spanish-dominant

Arlington · VA

The Inner-NoVA Bilingual Renter

39,132 — Guatemalan-led
Coming in, not yet settled

Alexandria · VA

The Recent-Arrival Renter

29,519 — most recently arrived

Fairfax · VA

The Upwardly-Mobile South American

208,763 — 46% of DMV Peruvians

832K people. Six markets. The average is the only thing they share.

Every number: Census ACS 1-year 2024 (B03001 · B19013I · B01001I). Personas are what the numbers add up to — not invented archetypes. Map shapes schematic.

The pivot

The pivotwhy this room should care

$0B of DMV buying power.~4% of America's ad spend.

The money is here. The attention isn't — nationally, the Hispanic share of ad budgets has moved from 3% to 4% in twenty-five years, while Latinos became 20% of the country. Nobody in this region is beating that average. What follows is the playbook.

Not a scandal — an arbitrage.

$4.1T

nationwide US Latino purchasing power

the $30B above is this region's slice — its richest per household

+60%

DMV Latino income vs US Latino median

a premium market, not the value segment

Buying power: Selig Center + Census composite (DMV); LDC/ASU + Nielsen 2025 ($4.1T national). Ad-spend share: national industry estimate (ANA/AIMM 2024) — not DMV-specific.

Every square = 1% of America
outlined = the 20% who are Latino
yellow = the 4% of ad spend aimed at them

03 — The three rules

Part 03how Latino attention actually works in 2026

Three rules.

01

Stories, not ads.

Creative · Espacio

02

Always present.

Distribution · 35 years in these homes

03

Be relevant to me.

Data · the Decision Map

01

▶ Playing: Lo Nuestro · our weekly series on the Latino businesses of the DMV · @eltiempolatino

03 — The three rules

Rule 01 · Creativehow Latino attention works in 2026

Stories,not ads.

This audience rewards narrative that's culturally theirs — and punishes translation. We measure it weekly on our own channels.

85% of digital ad impressions last under 2.5 seconds — too short to even form a memory. And when the creative is culturally relevant, consumers are 2.7× more likely to buy the brand for the first time. The story belonging is the performance lever.Nelson-Field / VCCP 2025 · ANA AIMM CIIM™

Cultural fit converts

up to 28×

the industry banner baseline — median 23× across 69 placements on our channels. The fit converts, not the placement.

This layer = creative · Espacio, powered by Tiempo

02

▶ Playing: Los eventos de la semana · our weekly events guide, every week · @eltiempolatino

03 — The three rules

Rule 02 · Distributionhow Latino attention works in 2026

Always present,not just selling.

Trust here is built between the asks. A brand that appears only when it wants something — or only during Heritage Month — arrives as a stranger.

65% of US Latinos remember the brands that address their community consistently — and 64% say their values are better reflected locally than by national brands. The industry now has a name for the opposite: "Latino coating."Hispanic Sentiment Study 2025 · Hispanic Marketing Council 2025

What always-on looks like

29/30

Comcast placements in our last 30 newsletter issues. Presence, not a campaign.

This layer = distribution · 681K DMV Latinos in 90 days

03

▶ Playing: Taisha Estrada · boricua roots in the DMV · @eltiempolatino

03 — The three rules

Rule 03 · Datahow Latino attention works in 2026

Be relevantto me.

"Don't talk to me if it's not for me." The six people on the map don't share a price point, a language mix, or a calendar — so they can't be bought as one audience. Precision is the whole game.

Third-party "Hispanic" data segments fail ~70% of the time: 30% average accuracy, and 42% of Latinos missing from the datasets entirely. First-party knowledge is the scarce asset — we sit on 35 years of it.Truthset 2021 / 2023 · IAB State of Data 2024

Coverage, measured

82%

of the DMV Latino market reached in 90 days — 681K unique people at $0.014 each. Deduplicated, vs Census denominators.

This layer = data · The Decision Map

05 — Receipts

Part 05proof, not promise

Brands like yours already run here.Measured.

Eleven brands ran 69 paid placements in our last 30 newsletter issues. Every bar on this chart is a real campaign that ran — categories on the axis, names over coffee. The dotted line is the industry.

0

top placement CTR

a flagship culture institution — 28× baseline

23×

median sponsor CTR

across all 69 placements vs 0.3% baseline

0

newsletter click rate

vs ~2.5% industry average

Real advertiser CTR · incl. government, transit & utility campaigns · top campaigns shown

Source: Beehiiv sponsored-placement performance, El Tiempo Latino Daily, trailing window. Culturally aligned placements; generic banners run at industry rates. Data + creative (Espacio) + distribution + measurement under one roof — and your reporting counts DMV audiences only.

05 — The studio

The three rules — recapfrom the newsroom to the studio

Stories. Presence.
Precision.

Three rules anyone in this room can write down. But a rule isn’t a campaign — someone has to run all three, together, every week. We built a studio for exactly that.

Rooted in culture · Powered by Tiempo Company

The studio behind the Chase financial stories, the Tierra Mía documentary series — and the case you’re about to see.

Culture holds your meaning. Let’s find it.

▶ @eltiempolatino
#advertiser · Flash BRT

Reel · EN + ES

The actual artifacts: reels · full-page print · carousels · radio

05 — Case study

Espacio × El Tiempo Latino · case studythe method, landed in this county

The route nobody knewthey needed.

MCDOT · Flash BRT · Veirs Mill corridor · Montgomery County, MD

Rule 03 · data

Find the real fear

A corridor under construction — and residents fearing the project would take their homes and businesses. The county's own channels weren't reaching the people most affected.

Rule 01 · stories

Answer it out loud

Clarity-first creative that named the fear directly — "un proyecto que no adquiere viviendas ni negocios" — and turned infrastructure into daily life. Built bilingual from day one.

Rule 02 · presence

Be everywhere they are

Reels, carousels, full-page print and radio, in English and Spanish — every piece pointing to the county's public info sessions. A presence, not a flight.

0

people reached

864K

impressions

4,439

targeted clicks to the project

Run with the Montgomery County Department of Transportation for the Veirs Mill Flash BRT project. Numbers reflect ETL-distributed placements. Full case in the leave-behind.

06 — Wrapping up

Wrapping upyours whether you ever call us or not

Take this with you.

Earned, owned or paid — these five don't care whose budget line

1

Plan by county and country — not “Hispanic.”

This is six markets led by El Salvador, not one led by Mexico. The average is wrong six times at once.

2

Speak Spanish-leading bilingual.

4 in 5 live in Spanish or both. Stories and service in their register — never translated English ads.

3

Be present between the asks.

Trust compounds weekly; campaigns just harvest it. Be there all year — not just one month.

4

Make video the first language.

Feed-native, vertical, subtitled. On our channels it takes 91% of the conversation.

5

Demand receipts.

Third-party “Hispanic” segments are ~30% accurate. Whoever you buy from — make them show first-party proof against real baselines.

Apply these five with anyone — even without us — and your Latino marketing gets better. That was the point of this breakfast.

Breakfast briefing · Washington, DC · 08.13.2026

Scan → your category

Breakfast briefing
August 13, 2026

Before you leave

Tell us your category.We'll cut the map for it.

Leave us your category today — a city program, a campaign, an event season, an enrollment push, a ratepayer outreach, a client pitch — whatever you need this community to hear. In one week you get the Decision Map cut for your audience: your county, your persona, your channel mix. Thirty minutes to walk through it. No pitch.

Pilots start at $5K · Public agencies & nonprofits: MOUs, co-branded public education · Agencies: bring your next pitch — we white-label
Paid, earned or co-produced — the map doesn't care whose budget line. Prefer quiet? Leave your card with Andrea — or scan:

01

Today

Tell Andrea your category before you leave — that's the whole ask.

02

In one week

A one-page audience brief: your county, your persona, your channel mix — and a pilot cost estimate.

03

Then, if it makes sense

A pilot. Small, measured against the baselines you saw today, honest about what worked.

Andrea Chacón · El Tiempo Latino · eltiempolatino.com