Performance marketing has become even more crucial in Latin America due to the rapid acceleration of e-commerce since the pandemic started. We talked to Juan Pablo Suarez, Head of Performance LatAm at Teads to better understand attribution modelling, the use of first party data, pricing and the ascent of third party marketplaces,
Juan Pablo Suarez is an experienced performance marketer. He is now leading Teads‘ Latin American performance marketing efforts. Suarez previously had senior roles at Kontent Room and Criteo,
Asked about how brand marketers should measure ROI on advertising spending, Suarez answers that “they should always talk about ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) or COS (Cost of selling) when looking at the return of advertising campaigns. The way it should be done is using a multitouch attribution model, so each media provider used can be measured according to its contribution.”
Performance Marketing: Setting the Price
Suarez notes that in order to set an appropriate price per consumer action (e.g. click, conversion etc), he asks his clients to to set a conversion benchmark depending on the product category, vertical and type of conversion. “For example it’s harder to convert a lead than to achieve the sale of a retail product, such as electronics.” He adds that the media inventory is bought on a dynamic CPM and CPC basis. The trick is to find the lowest possible CPM in order to reach the client’s KPI.
According to Suarez, “in order to optimize toward conversions, he finds it best to impact users that have not
interacted with the brand yet and have not made a specific action within their site. “This is why Teads’ AI was built to find new users, to ensure we’re adding value to our clients by driving new qualified traffic.”
Suarez says that he can offer first party data to his clients, taking into account all legal regulations in order to avoid any misuse. However, “if we keep targeting the same users that are already familiar with the brand, there would be no increase in traffic, actions and potentialsales, since the users impacted remain the same.”
Third Party Marketplaces and Performance Based Marketing
Third Party marketplaces including Mercado Libre, Amazon and Rakuten are becoming very important for brand marketers in Latin America. Many regional and local retailers, including multi-vertical app companies Rappi and Grupo Exito have launched or are about to launch their media sales operations. Performance based marketing needs to take this fact into account. Suarez notes that
“Teads is currently working with major marketplaces in some countries in LATAM. In addition to this, since supermarkets and top retailers have seen an increase in ecommerce demand, we are leveraging our relationship with them implementing Teads’ technology in order to provide additional insights to clients beyond standard campaign information. We have put this into practice with Cencosud in Colombia and Falabella in Peru and Argentina.”
The Ascent of Social Selling
Social selling, direct selling over social media properties like Instagram has become very important, particularly in social media over-indexing Latin America. E-commerce marketing initiatives may be well advised to take this into account and be based on performance based marketing. Suarez emphasizes that “the power of social media is based on the P2P recommendation and the massive penetration it has in the region.”
“Certain markets, such as Colombia, have seen the usage of Whatsapp as a great tool for social selling. Social Media is definitely a potential channel, but brands still need to be cautious because of all the heat social receives due to fake news, lesser attention for ads, and unsafe environments,” Suarez concludes.
