Portada asked several executives from companies heavily involved in digital advertising in the U.S. Hispanic market, Latin America and Spain about their growth expectations for 2012. On average, respondents of these so-called Latin Digital Powerhouses expect digital advertising in the Latin World to grow by 15% in 2012.
Most respondents think that automotive will continue to be the strongest ad category. Financial and Telecommunications are other ad categories expected to be strong in 2012.
Diego Santos Caballero (photo), Director of Eltiempo.com, El Tiempo, Colombia says that “definitely automotive, financial, commodities markets and mobile/phone companies and beverages will be strong”.
According to Diego Morales, Account Director of Matomy in Mexico City automotive, telecom and financial will be the strongest categories.
Jose Luis Carrete Alfeiran (photo), Regional Director Digital of Editorial Televisa in Mexico City thinks that “Automotive will continue to be the strongest category, Consumer Pro-ducts and Finance are the other leading categories.”
Juan Francisco Diez, VP of Sales at Betazeta Networks, Chile, answered that “retail and telecom” will be the strongest categories in digital advertising in 2012.
Germán Herebia, (photo) CEO of Buenos Aires, Argentina, based Intextual also sees high growth in automotive and telcos.
Very Hot: Online Video and Mobile
Regarding the type of digital media with the highest growth rate in 2012.
Regarding the digital media vehicle that will grow the most, most executives cite on line video and display advertising. Says Diego Morales “Video will experience the biggest growth but display will remain at the top.” Beta Zeta Network’s, Juan Francisco Diez expects particularly high growth in “high impact tailored made display advertising connected to premium content marketing”.
Diego Santos Caballero also chose online display and online video as the strongest media types for next year, and Germán Herebia said they were receiving lots of RFPs regarding video and mobile formats.
On the other hand, Jose Luis Carrete Alfeiran thinks that “Display (CPM) will continue to grow at a fast rate, as well as display Rich Media. Display accounts for +-60%, while Online Video advertising is still in an early stage in Latin America,”
Growth Challenges: Old Habits and Scarcity of In-House Digital Teams
Jose Luis Carrete Alfeiran thinks that one of the main challenges the Latin digital Advertising industry faces are advertisers old habits of mostly investing in off-line media. “In Latin America and the U.S. Hispanic market less than 5% of ad budgets is allocated to digital, compared to the 15%+ in the USA, or 24%+ in some European countries.”, Carrete notes.
Intextual’s Germán Herebia says that “Advertisers need to have digital teams in house to better understand the medium and to better communicate with their digital agencies.” And Diego Morales sees the economic scenario in “first world countries” as the main difficulty for growth. For El Tiempo’s Diego Santos Caballero innovation is one of the main challenges going into next year.
