US' largest Hispanic newspaper group, ImpreMedia, is launching a single and centralized digital platform for its Spanish-language papers.

"We want 10% of our total advertising to be from online by the end of 2009," said Arturo Duran, CEO of ImpreMedia Digital, mentioning that the group's online revenue is still "very small and local."

The new portal, Impre.com, is currently in beta testing and will be officially launched next month.

Until now, according to Advertising Age, "ImpreMedia's web effort has been a hodgepodge of individual sites" with (very) basic features.

Unlike many dailies in the US, ImpreMedia has fared successfully in print in recent years, claiming to reach 11 million adults monthly through its print and online platforms, including 2.2 million unique visitors online.

With the emergence of online news, Duran pointed out that ImpreMedia's target readers can go straight to the websites of major newspapers from Hispanic countries. So the challenge for ImpreMedia publications is to do more than offer a Spanish-language paper, and provide local coverage from a Hispanic point of view.

"It's not about language anymore," Duran said. "It's about the Hispanic perspective."

Source: Advertising Age through IFRA Executive News Service