The event drew more than 500 attendees from Mexico, but also from many other Latin American countries, including Argentina, Chile and Brazil, as well as from the U.S. Below are some of the main issues presenters and panelists spoke about and, almost as important, what attendees had to say.
- What is Razorfish’s next move?
Joe Crump, Group Vice President, Strategy & Planning at Razorfish, held one of the main presentations. On one hand he talked about U.S. president’s Obama’s innovative presidential campaign (“What the election of America’s first digital president means for the future of advertising”.) Crump also commented a recent study by Razorfish on the evolution of the Latin American digital media sector (Portada is going to publish an article about the study this week).
Crump did not talk about something many attendees would like to know: Is Razorfish going to develop its Latin American presence just organically (Razorfish this year opened an office in Brazil and soon will be opening offices in Mexico and Argentina) or is the Microsoft owned digital agency also going to grow through acquisitions? Some IAB Conecta attendees told Portada that Razorfish may want to gain business and expertise buy acquiring local agencies.
Are some Latin American digital media agency executives secretly hoping to cash out by selling to this major player? (For a recent interview of Joe Crump with Portada, please click here).
- Online Ad-Networks: Are they the future (also in Latin America)?
In an interesting break out session Nicole Falsey, Regional Director Latin America, Right Media moderated a panel with several major Latin American Digital Media executives including Engel Fonseca, Country Manager Mexico Punto Fox, Guillermo Abud, Digital Senior Director Latin America, Starcom Media Vest, Pablo Potente, Director, Harren Media and Mariano Burstein, Director Adfunky.
Falsey noted that out of the 200 billion monthly impressions traded in Right Media, the online ad exchange owned by Yahoo, 25 billion take place in Latin America based media properties and 9 billion in Mexico only. Yet, panelists emphasized the relatively low participation of online ad netwoks in Latin American online markets when compared to the U.S and Europe. While in the U.S. online advertising market transactions done through online ad networks amounted to only 5% in 2006, this ratio grew to 30% in 2007 and amounted to approximately 50% in 2008. While there is no public data for Latin America, participants agreed that the proportion lies below 10%. However, they expect a similar evolution as in the United Stated and Europe as the Latin American digital media market takes off and matures.
All panelists explained that online ad networks can play a great role in reducing the complexity of digital advertising buys, particularly by providing advertisers access to what is called the long tail (niche oriented sites with relatively few visitors which at the same time can be excellent targets for particular campaigns).
- Substantial reach of digital media properties in the Spanish-speaking world
A clear trend also reflected at IAB Conecta is the internationalization of website visits within the Spanish-speaking world. Culture, content and context are drivers for website visits, not geography (for a related article, click here). Traffic figures provided to Portada by digital media properties represented at IAB Conecta can speak volumes about this:
- Psicofxp., a Buenos Aires, Argentina, based company that hosts online communities is planning to open a Mexico office. 22% of the site’s traffic comes from Mexico, 28% from Argentina and approximately 8% out of the U.S. Hispanic market. Substantial traffic also comes from Spain and other Latin American countries.
- While Televisa does not allow of itsWeb TV site TVolucion.com in the U.S, due to copyrights issues, other Televisa online properties definitely reach U.S. Hispanic, Spanish and Latin American audiences, including popular sports site Televisadeportes.com. Online recruitment site Teempleo.com, also owned by Televisa, gets 8% of its visitors from U.S. based IP’s.
- GE-Interactive, the online unit of Mexican publisher Grupo Editorial Expansion has several properties which are broadly visited by U.S. based IP’s (mostly Mexican immigrants living in the U.S.). Approximately 25% of soccer portal Mediotiempo’s 2.5 million monthly unique visitors come from the U.S.A substantial amount of business news site CNNExpansion.com’s 800,000 monthly unique visitors are also based in the U.S. Metroscubicos.com, a real estate website, has an English language site with 5,000 monthly unique visitors.
- E-mail marketer Canal Mail, with offices in Spain, Mexico and Portugal, manages approximately 800,000 (co registered) e-mails in the U.S. Hispanic market, more than 5 million in Mexico and 10.8 million in Spain.
- Rapidly evolving Mexican Online Classified Market
The Mexican online recruitment market recently got a new player. Televisa launched recruitment property Teempleo.com one month ago. Other large player include Occmundial http://www.occ.com.mx/ and http://www.bumeran.com.mx/. Both sites also have a strong presence in Central and South America. While U.S. giant Monster has a Mexican site this is not the case for other U.S. Leaders like Careerbuilder or Hotjobs.