The Latin America media and advertising markets are almost ruled by huge TV budgets. In this context, non-linear TV properties (e.g. native digital properties as well as digital properties of magazines and newspapers ) have a tremendous opportunity to capture some of these TV advertising monies.
Lorena Hure contributed to this article.
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Guido Conterno, executive director at GDA, a consortium of major Latin American newspapers including Argentina’s La Nacion and Mexico’s El Mercurio, says that “newspaper and print based sites are rapidly incorporating video as a substitute of photos; once the processes are in place, and robust webTV sites set, they will get a share of those investments.”
An important aspect that will greatly contribute to channel TV ad investment to the digital environment, is the technology provided by supply side platforms (SSPs).
According to Jorg Nowak, Head of Latin America at YuMe “This is certainly a global trend that is an important topic in LatAm as well. Reason being is that clients request a faster turn around time to measure the ROI of the campaigns and that puts pressure on everyone in the campaign life cycle to work faster, as well as becoming even more detail oriented when it comes to categorizing the inventory by the various demographics. The latter can only be achieved by automating the process”.
However in Latin America, not so much in the U.S., it may take a while until traditional TV advertisers decide to transfer their budgets to digital video. For now, other experts tell Portada, most of the growth of online video comes from monies exiting display advertising (banner ads). Free TV ad and Pay-TV ad budgets, while much bigger budgets, are only threatened by online video in the medium and long terms.
As Carly Bellis, Co-Founder & CSO at Impaktu suggests: “I do not see this happening in the short-term, but it is possible that the shift will happen in the medium term, most likely via private marketplaces. Right now the SSPs with inventory available in Latin America tend to have lower quality, non-local content at lower prices. From recent studies we also know there is a high incidence of fraudulent sites. Local LatAm publishers with high quality, brand safe content do not want to lump in their content with the existing content and seemingly devalue their inventory. The same is true in the U.S. with most premium publishers. However, I do think that private marketplaces will be more readily adopted in the medium term, giving publishers more control over the buyers, the pricing and how their inventory is bought.”
Programmatic Video’s Latin American Infancy
Manny Montilla, sales director at Adapt.tv (photos left), takes a similar position to Bellis: “I do see publishers adopting sell side platforms. However, I think it will happen in the medium term. Programmatic video is still largely in its infancy in Latin American markets. Right now there’s a lot of ‘toe dipping’ happening where publishers are brokering deals for their video inventory with a multitude of 3rd parties (mostly ad networks) who in-turn are trying to activate that inventory across programmatic partnerships and attract significant demand volume. As the comfort and education around transacting video increases and reasonable understanding is attained I think publishers (especially the larger ones) in Latin America will be losing out on major revenue if they don’t consider partnering with programmatic video solutions directly. The advantages of doing so are too compelling to ignore, especially as publishers establish their own private exchanges and start offering buyers more interesting slices of their inventory than would be available in a public market place.”
What lies ahead?
The fact that implementing this technology would contribute greatly to deriving investment to the digital environment is confronted with the resistance publishers are confronted with.
As Eric Tourtel, General Manager for the Latin American market at Teads.tv (photo), says: “We also see some publishers that are a bit concerned about losing control of their inventory or their pricing, with some people incorrectly thinking that programmatic means ‘bought cheaply’ when in fact it means ‘bought automatically’. It is, however, simply a matter of training and sharing experiences”.
In short, even if everything shows TV ad investment will eventually be derived to the digital environment, there are a few challenges to be overcome first. So far, users are giving a positive sign to publishers with regards to their consumption habits; however, the implementation of the right technology to enable digital advertising in lieu of TV, might take some time.
The enormous opportunities and the evolution of the Latin American online video landscape will be examined in-depth by major experts of the brand marketing, agency, media and measurement world at Portada’s Latin Online Video Forum on June 3 in Miami (part of #Portadalat.)
CHECK OUT: 10 things you need to know about the Latin American Online Video Advertising Market
