EDO, the New York-based television measurement company, published its third annual Spanish-Language TV Outcomes Report on September 30, 2026, concluding that the average advertisement on Spanish-language networks in the United States generated 47% more impact, as the company defines it, than the average English-language spot between August 2025 and July 2026 - a lead that falls to 24% once audience size is removed from the calculation, against a 30% advantage the company reported a year earlier.

In Short

A company called EDO, which counts how many people search for a brand in the minutes after its TV ad airs, published a study on September 30, 2026 comparing Spanish-language and English-language television ads in the United States. It found that an average Spanish-language ad set off 47% more of that activity, largely because those ads reach big audiences, and 24% more for each person who saw it. That matters to brands splitting TV money between the two languages, although that 24% is lower than the 30% lead EDO reported in 2025. The study also says most ads made for the World Cup stopped running on Spanish-language TV after the final, even though the few that kept going did better than average.

Scope of the third edition

The report covers twelve months, from August 2025 through July 2026. Across that window, according to EDO, Spanish-language networks carried 1.3 million national ad airings from 631 brands and delivered 332.3 billion impressions. The impression total was 13% higher than in the preceding twelve months, which implies a prior-year base of roughly 294 billion.

Two headline measures sit on top of those volumes, and the distinction between them governs how the rest of the document reads. The first, effectiveness, puts the average Spanish-language ad 24% ahead of the average English-language ad on what EDO calls a per-person, per-second basis - after the company has controlled for audience size and spot length. The second, impact, folds audience size back in. On that measure the average Spanish-language ad produced 1.47 times the ad-driven engagement of its English-language counterpart, a figure EDO says rose 34% year on year. The Business Wire release that accompanied the report rounded the impact number up to "nearly 50%" in its headline.

EDO attributes the widening to three forces: growth in the U.S. Hispanic population, milestones in Latin cultural visibility, and a record-setting World Cup. The company's release singles out Bad Bunny becoming the first Latino artist to headline a Super Bowl halftime show alone, an all-Spanish performance that drew 128.2 million viewers in February. None of the three explanations is tested statistically in the report. They are offered as context.

Laura Grover, senior vice president and head of client solutions at EDO, framed the findings in the release. "Spanish-Language TV (SLTV) is no longer just the most overlooked opportunity in advertising - it's also one of the fastest-growing," she said. "For years, the average SLTV ad has delivered more bang for the marketer's buck by driving stronger engagement than the average English-Language TV ad. But over the past year, this delta has grown even wider, delivering stronger outcomes across brand categories and measurable business impact for advertisers."

A lower effectiveness figure than in 2025

That "delta" depends on which measure is chosen. On impact, the gap widened. On effectiveness, the sequence across EDO's three editions runs the other way.

In October 2024, EDO put Spanish-language ads 31% ahead of English-language ads in effectiveness over the prior year. Its second edition, released on October 2, 2025 with a video introduction from Dan Riess, chief operating officer of U.S. ad sales at TelevisaUnivision, reported a 30% lift in consumer engagement and described roughly $2 billion of analysed spend, according to EDO's release at the time. The third edition's equivalent figure is 24%. EDO does not present this as a decline, does not reconcile the three numbers, and does not say whether its methodology changed between editions. The 2026 report also publishes no spend figure.

The genre data complicate the picture further. In the 2025 edition, according to EDO, scripted entertainment ran 36% ahead of its English-language equivalent, news 49% ahead and live sports 9% ahead. The 2026 figures are 44% for scripted entertainment, 48% for news and 14% for sports, with reality programming, not broken out in the same way a year ago, at 9%. Three comparable genres therefore widened or held while the overall figure fell. An aggregate can move against its components when the mix of airings shifts between genres, or when genres outside the published four move sharply. The report contains no breakdown that would show which happened.

What, then, drove the wider impact gap? If the two editions measure the same thing, impact rose while per-person response weakened, which leaves audience delivery as the main source of the change. The 34% growth figure itself is open to more than one reading. The report variously describes it as growth in the "performance gap" and as growth in "average ad impact". If the 1.47 multiplier is 34% higher than last year's multiplier, the 2025 equivalent would have been about 1.10. If instead the 47-point gap grew 34%, the prior gap would have been about 35 points. EDO does not publish the prior-year impact figure, so the two readings cannot be separated from the documents.

How the numbers are built

Every figure in the report comes from one measurement system. EDO says it has captured every national linear TV ad since 2015, a database the company puts at 604 million ad airings, 2.7 million creatives, 35,000 brands and 113 trillion impressions. Against that log of airings it runs what it calls a proprietary outcomes model of minute-by-minute search behaviour, drawn from Google's API. Earlier descriptions of the same infrastructure, such as the Always-On product EDO built with NBCUniversal and Paramount in January, also cite site visitation alongside search activity.

The mechanics are visible in a diagram on the report's methodology page. EDO establishes an engagement baseline from the 15 minutes before an airing and the 15 minutes after it, projects what branded engagement would have been without the ad, and then measures the spike above that projection in a window running from two to five or more minutes after the spot airs. Comparisons between ads are then adjusted for impressions, duration and factors such as seasonality.

Two metrics come out of that process. The Engagement Rate Index, or ERI, measures relative ad effectiveness on a per-exposure basis and can be isolated to media or creative performance. The Ad Multiplier expresses how many defined ad units would be needed to generate the same level of engagement, and is the source of the "impact" figures. A 1.47 multiplier, in other words, means the average Spanish-language spot did the work of 1.47 average English-language spots.

The projected baseline is a counterfactual - an estimate of what would have happened without the ad. It is not a randomised control group. That distinction sits at the centre of current arguments over incrementality, which the IAB and IAB Europe defined in November 2025 as the additional business outcomes a campaign directly drives compared with what would have occurred without it. EDO's approach estimates that counterfactual from the minutes surrounding each airing rather than from a holdout audience.

The link between engagement and sales is also asserted rather than demonstrated in this document. The report states that studies across multiple industries have found an increase in online engagement for a brand leads to increased market share, but it names none of them. The premise is not unique to EDO. Google, which supplies the search data underneath the model, has made a related argument for its own products, claiming an average $31 sales increase for every additional branded search that follows an ad impression.

Kevin Krim, EDO's president and chief executive, used the release to position the method against rivals. "Spanish-language TV is a powerful medium for brands to drive engagement and grow market share, but advertisers can't afford to make their decisions on spotty methodologies that don't reveal true incrementality," he said. "The insights uncovered in our third annual Spanish-Language TV Outcomes report offer just a taste of how marketers can use EDO's TV outcomes to measure themselves against the competition and optimize performance with immediate, investment-grade signals of ad-driven performance."

The report is, in the end, a sales document for a syndicated data product. Its final page carries a sales pitch and a contact address, and the methodology heading promises measurement "Across Linear & Streaming TV". Yet the database statistics refer only to national linear ads, and the report does not say whether the 1.3 million airings and 332.3 billion impressions include streamed carriage of Spanish-language networks. On July 30, the Video Advertising Bureau named EDO among nine vendors across three measurement approaches in its guide to ad engagement measurement, which places the company in a crowded field rather than above it.

Genres: scripted drama and news set the pace

Four programming genres are broken out, according to EDO. Together they account for 887,810 airings and 244.9 billion impressions, roughly 68% of all airings and 74% of impressions in the dataset.

GenreAiringsImpressionsEffectiveness vs English-languageImpact vs English-language
Scripted entertainment362,23197.4 billion+44%2.1x
Sports295,35153.2 billion+14%Not published
Reality TV149,27035 billion+9%1.9x
News80,95859.3 billion+48%1.7x

Reality programming shows how far the two measures can diverge. Its per-person lead over English-language reality shows is the smallest of the four, at 9%, yet its impact multiplier of 1.9 is the second-highest. Audience size, not response rate, does most of that work. Sports is the only genre for which no impact figure appears.

Each genre carries a creative spotlight, and the airing counts behind them are small. Coors Light's 30-second Spanish-language spot "Gaoool", featuring the sportscaster Andrés Cantor, ran 12 times and was 394% more effective than the average Spanish-language scripted entertainment ad. Walmart's 15-second "Back to School is Back", featuring the actress Stephanie Beatriz, also aired 12 times and finished 252% ahead of the average Spanish-language news ad. The General's "Piraguas", with the former basketball player Shaquille O'Neal, aired 25 times and was 537% ahead of the reality average. Powerade's "Legends Rise" produced the largest spotlight figure, 1,455% above the average Spanish-language sports ad, on 35 airings.

Brand rankings within genres measure each advertiser against the average Spanish-language advertiser in the same genre. Fabletics led scripted entertainment at 2,251% above that average, followed by Taco Bell at 1,383% and Walmart at 1,347%. Walmart led news at 1,484%, ahead of Amazon at 1,439% and Taco Bell at 1,319%, with Chevrolet and McDonald's completing the top five. In reality programming Old Navy ranked first at 1,195%, with Walmart, Fabletics, Honda and Pizza Hut behind it. Wayfair topped sports at 1,221%, narrowly ahead of PlayStation at 1,205%.

Scale and efficiency are different lists

The report's two brand tables barely overlap. By impressions, Walmart led with 7.1 billion, followed by Domino's at 6.0 billion, McDonald's and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital at 5.5 billion each, and Lowe's at 5.2 billion. Modelo, Burger King, Dove, Progressive and Verizon filled the remaining places, from 4.8 billion down to 3.6 billion.

The effectiveness table, which compares each brand with the overall Spanish-language average, is led by GovX at 1,623% above average. Taco Bell, Dr Pepper, Fabletics and Old Navy follow, all above 1,000%, then Walmart at 1,050%, KFC at 941%, Amazon at 784%, Pizza Hut at 782% and Sonic at 749%. Walmart is the only brand to appear in both top tens.

A separate spotlight on Honda puts the carmaker 664% above the average Spanish-language advertiser across 1,157 airings - an unusually large sample next to the single-creative examples elsewhere in the document.

The World Cup on Telemundo and Universo

The 2026 men's World Cup accounted for 7,743 Spanish-language airings and 17.8 billion impressions, according to EDO. That is about 0.6% of the year's airings and about 5.4% of its impressions. The average World Cup ad on Spanish-language broadcasts generated 11 times the impact of the average ad across both languages.

That multiplier is an impact figure, and so it carries the audience of a global tournament inside it. The report publishes no per-person effectiveness number for World Cup advertising. For scale, a separate EDO release listed alongside this one put NFL advertising at 73 times the impact of primetime in the company's fourth annual NFL report.

Audience share is where outside data diverge most sharply from EDO's framing. The report cites Adobe and Nielsen for the claim that 45% of U.S. World Cup consumption was in Spanish. The Video Advertising Bureau's post-tournament analysis of Nielsen data found that Spanish-language networks carried 28% of the persons 2+ average audience across World Cup matches, on a linear-only basis that excluded streaming. The two figures are not necessarily in conflict, since "consumption" may include streams of Telemundo's coverage on Peacock and other platforms, but the report does not define the term. Impression totals differ in the same way. iSpot counted 10.70 billion household impressions on Spanish-language broadcasts against 14.49 billion in English, a household-level count that cannot be compared directly with EDO's 17.8 billion.

The rights structure concentrated that audience. Telemundo held exclusive Spanish-language rights in the United States, with Telemundo and Universo carrying 92 and 12 matches respectively, and Nielsen recorded a 143% month-on-month rise in viewing to Telemundo broadcast affiliates in June. On iSpot's figures, Modelo was the most-seen brand during Spanish-language coverage, while The Home Depot led English-language broadcasts and held a 2.79% combined share of voice, with McDonald's at 1.78%.

McDonald's is EDO's World Cup brand spotlight. Across 287 Spanish-language tournament airings, its ads were 438% more effective than the average Spanish-language World Cup advertiser, according to the report. McDonald's, Burger King and Toyota are named as brands whose soccer-themed creative generated strong engagement.

Hydration breaks

The tournament's most distinctive inventory came from a rule change. FIFA confirmed in December 2025 that all 104 matches would include two mandatory three-minute hydration breaks, near the 22nd and 67th minutes, and in March 2026 it allowed broadcasters to sell advertising during those breaks. Networks could choose between a split-screen format restricted to FIFA partner sponsors and a full cut-away open to any advertiser.

Telemundo layered sponsorships into the breaks without cutting away from the match, an approach the report says drew audience praise. According to EDO, the average hydration-break sponsorship on Telemundo produced 39 times the impact of the average ad on English- or Spanish-language television. iSpot's own analysis found that hydration-break pods held viewers better than halftime or extra-time breaks across the tournament.

The 39 times figure is the largest number in the report and the least documented. EDO does not say how many sponsorships were measured, which brands bought them, or how an on-screen sponsorship layered over live play was converted into a unit comparable with a 30-second spot under its duration controls.

Creative that matched the moment

A page on cultural relevance identifies four brands whose World Cup work outperformed the Spanish-language tournament average. Airbnb ran 62 airings and finished 104% above that average with a spot, scored to The Beatles' "Come Together", that traced cultural exchange from the origins of Brazilian jiu-jitsu to the mixing of fans at the tournament, with little explicit branding. Ford ran 167 airings and finished 96% above average; its strongest single creative, built around fans watching matches with the brand in a supporting role, produced 140% stronger engagement than the average Spanish-language World Cup ad.

Kalshi, the prediction market platform, ran 89 airings and finished 66% above average. Its most instructive result involved a spot featuring the Real Madrid coach José Mourinho. The 30-second English-language version, carrying Spanish subtitles, was 73% more effective than the average Spanish-language World Cup ad. A 15-second cut of the same ad, without subtitles, finished below average. The result sits alongside VAB's finding that 12.5% of Telemundo's World Cup audience consisted of English-only speakers, peaking at 20.7% for Belgium against Senegal. The same VAB report, citing iSpot spend records, put Kalshi's total tournament television outlay at $49.2 million across 252 airings on FOX, FS1, FS2, Telemundo and Universo. Kalshi advertised through a period of regulatory pressure on its category, including Google's restriction of prediction market ads in Ohio in June.

The Home Depot ran 206 airings and finished 49% above average. Its 15-second spot with David Beckham, showing a soccer-themed patio project, was 109% more effective than the average Spanish-language World Cup ad, while a longer cut of the same execution came in 40% above the benchmark. In iSpot's separate likeability ranking of English-language World Cup ads, The Home Depot's "Beckham's Backyard" placed tenth with a score of 644, and Beckham appeared across eight brand campaigns during the tournament, according to that company.

EDO has also published a ranking of every national World Cup ad across both languages, which placed Kalshi, Oura Ring and AT&T at the top for engagement, according to the company.

The ads that stopped after the final

The report's most specific finding concerns what happened after July 19. According to EDO, 102 advertisers debuted 233 new creatives on Telemundo and Universo during the tournament. Only 19% of those creatives, about 44, ran anywhere else on Spanish-language television after the final. The introduction rounds the share to "about 20%".

Those that did continue performed above the norm. Airing during post-tournament soccer coverage, the World Cup debuts were 43% more effective than the average Spanish-language ad. In non-soccer programming they were 15% ahead.

Dove's "Keep Girls In Sports" is the worked example. The 15-second Spanish-language spot opens with overlay text stating that one in two girls who quit sports are criticised for their bodies, before turning to footage of girls playing. It aired 18 times during the tournament, when it was 21% more effective than the average Spanish-language ad, and 199 times afterwards, when that lead rose to 63%.

EDO calls the 81% that went dark a missed opportunity. Two caveats apply. The report does not say why most creatives stopped - whether because they were tied to sponsorship terms, built around a single match or simply never bought into other programming. And the creatives that kept running may have been selected precisely because they were working, in which case the 43% and 15% figures describe a filtered group rather than what the full set of 233 would have achieved.

Where the report and the release disagree

Several figures change between the 10-page report and the Business Wire release distributed on the same day. The General's "Piraguas" spot is 537% more effective than the average Spanish-language reality ad in the report and drives "578% more impact" than that average in the release. Walmart's back-to-school creative is described as 252% more effective in the report and as driving 252% more impact in the release - the same number attached to a different metric.

Celebrity attributions also shift. The report's executive summary lists Beckham's above-average spot as a Stella Artois ad, while the release lists it under The Home Depot. Beckham appeared in campaigns for both brands, according to iSpot, so both statements may be accurate, but they do not describe the same ad.

The release also says creatives from Airbnb and Ford each outperformed the World Cup field by triple digits. That holds for Airbnb at the brand level, at 104%. Ford's brand-level figure is 96%; only its best single creative, at 140%, clears 100%.

Why the figures matter for buyers

For media buyers, the case for Spanish-language television has long rested on a mismatch between audience and spend. Nielsen Ad Intel data from the first quarter of 2025 showed online retailers putting only 0.92% of their website advertising budgets into Spanish-language platforms, a figure PPC Land reported in January alongside Gray Media's Nielsen deal covering 44 Telemundo affiliates. EDO's report adds a television-side argument built on search response rather than audience share. Research from LDC and Kantar this year found 56% of Latinas had dropped brands over stereotypes, which bears on the report's emphasis on culturally specific creative.

The denominators under all of this are moving. Nielsen's seven currency changes scheduled for August 31, 2026 included revised Hispanic universe estimates combining the American Community Survey with the National Hispanic Enumeration Survey. Changes of that kind alter the audience figures against which Spanish-language inventory is valued in upfront deals, where Telemundo presented to buyers on May 12 during the 2026 upfront week.

EDO, for its part, has spent 2026 turning the same dataset into products. It released ChatEDO, a conversational agent for querying TV outcomes data, on February 4; Ad EnGage Optimize, which adjusts live campaigns on frequency, creative rotation and audience, on June 4; and a gaming partnership with Roblox on June 18. The annual Spanish-language report sits within that commercial programme. It is useful for its granularity - the airing counts, the genre splits, the post-tournament reruns - and limited by what a single vendor's model can establish about sales.

The next comparison will be harder. A fourth edition on the same calendar would cover August 2026 to July 2027, a period without a men's World Cup; VAB has noted that the tournament audience does not return until 2030. Whether the impact gap holds without 17.8 billion tournament impressions in the base, and whether the per-person lead keeps narrowing, are questions the 2026 data cannot answer.

Timeline

Summary

Who: EDO, a New York-based TV outcomes measurement company led by president and chief executive Kevin Krim, with Laura Grover, its senior vice president and head of client solutions. Brands named in the findings include Walmart, McDonald's, Coors Light, The General, Powerade, Honda, Airbnb, Ford, Kalshi, The Home Depot and Dove, alongside Telemundo and Universo as the Spanish-language World Cup broadcasters.

What: The third annual Spanish-Language TV Outcomes Report, which found the average Spanish-language ad generated 1.47 times the impact of the average English-language ad and was 24% more effective once audience size was removed, measured across 1.3 million airings, 332.3 billion impressions and 631 brands. The report also found that 19% of 233 World Cup debut creatives ran elsewhere on Spanish-language television after the final, and that those which did were 43% more effective than average during soccer programming.

When: Published on September 30, 2026, covering August 2025 through July 2026.

Where: U.S. national television, comparing Spanish-language networks with English-language networks, with a dedicated analysis of the 2026 men's World Cup on Telemundo and Universo.

Why: Advertisers splitting budgets between Spanish- and English-language television use outcome measures like these to judge where ads produce response. The report shows a widening impact gap but a narrower per-person lead than in EDO's 2025 edition, rests on a search-based model whose link to sales is asserted rather than demonstrated in the document, and leaves several World Cup figures, including the 39 times hydration-break result, without the detail needed to check them.