Is there a need for a U.S. Hispanic – Latin American Online Ad-Exchange?
Finding the most value for available ad inventory has always been a problem for publishers, and advertisers are of course interested in getting the best deal when they make a buy. Several companies, including Right Media (bought by Yahoo) and DoubleClick (bought by Google), began to address this problem a few years ago by creating auction-style exchanges to facilitate transactions between advertisers and media buyers. But what about a Latin American and/or U.S. Hispanic online ad exchange? Is there a need for a specific Ad-Exchange addressing the specific needs of Spanish-speaking (and Portuguese Speaking) publishers and advertisers. Portada asked several players in the U.S. Hispanic and Latin American Online Advertising industry what they think about a “specific” Ad-Exchange addressing their needs:
Hector Costa, Senior VP, Managing Director of .FOX. and Rafael Hernandez, Director of U.S. Hispanic Online Sales: “The segmentation of the audience in Latin America is already taking place. Punto FOX Networks is already serving each market and their most important DMAs. Comscore Media Metrix shows that .Fox-Media Partners had 51.2 million unique visitors during the month of February 2008. It reached 86.4% of the Total Internet Audience.
With regard to the Hispanic ad Networks, better segmentation has to be at the forefront. Advertisers need to be given the ability to target Hispanics better, whether by level of acculturation, country of origin, language preference, etc. When an ad network starts to offer these choices to advertisers, there will truly be "proper targeting,” We are moving forward to become the first to accomplish this success by rolling our international expertise to our US platform. I know it would be a huge undertaking, but one that I believe would yield a ‘real’ Hispanic network approach, and not just a slightly modified copy of general market network.”
Paul Meyer, VP Digital Media at Publicitas “I do think that it would be very beneficial for our space, but it will be a few years before the Latin American and US Hispanic market's media buyers fully embrace it. There is currently a lot of hype in the total market, but the acceptance has been very tepid. Ad Exchanges have a problem with transparency of publisher's names, technological limitations and a lack of understanding from the industry. But once the market matures, it will be a sizeable revenue source for the publishers and a great marketing tool for advertisers”.
Alicia Morga, CEO of Consorte Media: “Our understanding of Ad Exchanges is that they are most focused on trade efficiency which tends to mean self-service and this often translates into remnant inventory and very low CPMs. There is definitely a place for exchanges in the Hispanic/Lat Am market, although we're not focused on this. But anything that addresses this hugely underserved market is a very good thing.”
Danny Allen, president of AdMixture: “That’s an interesting idea. I think it might work in Latin America. In the US, I don’t think there’s the volume, at least not yet. The important thing for any exchange is liquidity. That liquidity is provided when you have a large volume of buyers and sellers. You need both to get an exchange going, and you won’t get one without the other. It’s a real chicken and egg problem. In the US Hispanic market today, I don’t think there’s the volume on either side to support an exchange.
The other thing an efficient exchange needs is good information. It does you no good to buy Hispanic ad impressions on an exchange if you don’t know anything about the site you’re buying on. Right now the Hispanic market is not developed enough that people know anything about the websites that are out there. Hispanic media buyers still need the educated and experienced service provided by Admixture and some of our competitors to help them understand what’s out there besides Univision.com, Terra, and Batanga.”
Margot Bradley, COO of Hola Networks: “No not particularly. US Hispanic and Latin America are two very distinct markets with very different cultures. Most clients have separate departments and budgets for each.”