Despite the occasional snow storm – hang in there East coast! – February is a great month with a lot to celebrate. While we all get excited about love notes, heart-shaped treats, and candle lit dinners, this is also the perfect time to celebrate diversity.

Right in time for Black History Month, Nielsen and the National Newspaper Publishers Association released their annual report on African-American Consumers. Titled, Resilient, Receptive and Relevant, The African-American Consumer 2013 Report, the report is a goldmine for advertisers who wish to understand and reach a diverse audience.

The full report is available here. But, I will make it easy for you—outlined below are some highlights on the current state of Black consumers and why marketers should speak directly to them:

More People, More Buying Power

The African American community represents 13.8% of the total United-States population and has been growing faster than the rest of the country since 2010. Beyond the immensity of its population, the African-Americans continue to rise as empowered consumers. The Black buying power, currently at a $1 trillion level, is set to grow to $1.3 trillion in 2017.  

Young and Feminine

African Americans are younger than the total population, with 53% under the age of 35. If you are an advertiser looking for Millennial consumers’ attention, you should reach out to the Black community.

Women are also a key part of the African-American community. They represent 54% of the Adult Black Population and make purchase decisions for the whole family.  In fact, 29% of all black households are headed by an African American woman; this compares to 20% of the overall population. Therefore, a message that relates and resonates with an African-American Woman will be filtered to the entire family.

Families and Shoppers

African-American households increased by 20% in 2013 compared to 2000, while aggregate income increased 45%. This means that Black’s income has grown 2.3 times faster than the number of Black households. African-Americans’ incomes may be smaller than the total population, but they are consistently increasing allowing them to be steady shoppers. In fact, Black households shop more frequently (8 trips more) than the Total Market households, making the mall a great environment to reach them.

Even though Nielsen’s report shows that Black consumers’ power continues to grow, advertisers remain shy about spending media dollars geared specifically toward the African-American community. Advertising focused on Black audiences only represented 3% of a $75 billion total media spend in 2012. This number seems particularly low knowing that African-Americans represent over 20% of the population in cities like Atlanta, Washington, Philadelphia, Detroit, Miami, or Baltimore.

Luckily, Adspace covers these major cities, with 111 malls indexing over 100 for African American shoppers when compared to the U.S average of African-Americans. Advertisers like BET and Universal Pictures understand the power of digital place-based video to target the Black audience as they recently chose Adspace to run campaigns for the TV show, 106 & Park, and the highly anticipated movie, The Best Man Holiday. Based on the high indices, I expect more marketers to follow BET’s lead in using Adspace to target the large, young, big spending African American population.