As Cynthia Evans, Managing Director at GroupM/Mediaedge:cia, pointed out during her presentation “The Increasing Integration of the Advertising and Media Business in the Spanish-Speaking World “ at Portada’s recent Panregional Advertising and Media Summit, several factors are driving to an integration of the advertising and media business in the Spanish-speaking world (Latin America, Spain and US Hispanic). Here is a summary of these factors and trends:
1) Technology, internet and bandwidth facilitate integration, convergence in consumer communication
2) Context and content link consumers and brands
3) Geographic borders become less important, than culture, interests and beliefs
4) The opportunity lies in creating integrated packages organized for context and content not necessarily media and geography
5) Content providers cross geographic borders
6) People are socializing across the border
7) Leverage interest areas across consumers and geographic boundaries in paid, owned and earned media
Nowhere are Evans’s comments truer than in the digital media world. As Evans, who is also Director of the Colgate Latin American account, points out, the drivers for website visits are culture, context and content not geography. Commonalities in culture and content preferences are frequent in the Spanish-speaking world and content providers are taking notice.
A good example of it is the sports category: ESPN ranks as the third most visited site in the sports category with 2.4 million visitors/month. In the U.S. Hispanic market it ranks second with 1.5 million uniques/month. Similarly with Fox Sports on MSN (ranked fourth in Latin America with 2.4 million uniques/month and also fourth in US Hispanics 885thousand uniques/month or Yahoo Sports 6th in Latin America with 2.3 million uniques/month and first in U.S. Hispanic with 1.9 million uniques/month.
More than ever Advertisers target particular categories regardless of media and geography. This is the case because geotargeting technologies allow to serve advertising segmented on where the audiences are based, regardless whether they are in the country the website is based in or not.
The Rise of Online Ad Networks
This is also explains why Online Advertising Networks are becoming so important in the Hispanic and Latin American advertising markets. These online ad networks include Punto Fox, EZTargetMedia (see below) and Batanga’s HispanoClick.
“The market wants to extend the reach of brands and is moving away from particular portals in order to embrace categories”, Alvaro Palacios, Regional Director of Business Development at EZTarget Media, an online ad network owned by Terra, tells Portada.
“A particular’s site’s reach is limited to the amount of visitors the site has. The market is increasing a lot in each of the markets. It makes sense to leverage Terra’s sales force capabilities to sell not only Terra ‘s sites but the partner websites in those countries,” Palacios adds.
Palacios says that in the online world, advertisers go after audience categories (e.g. sport followers or women etc….) rather than after a particular media property. Ad networks can cater to these needs representing a whole range of websites rather than a particular media property.
Ez Target is heaquartered in Brazil and has advertising sales offices, shared with Terra, in Miami, New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles , Mexico and other Latin American countries. It also has an exclusive sales network in Brazil and the U.S.
Related Article:
Selling Advertising in Spain based Websites to Advertisers Targeting US and Latin American Audiences (Part 1 of two part series)