Advertising in South America

It doesn’t have the economic heft of China, but South America with its 400 million people with 370 million mobile phones and growing, and 163 million plus internet users, is a desirable advertising market. Of course, the biggest player in South Americais not at all like the others.  Brazil, with a land mass slightly larger than the lower 48 U.S.states, fifth largest country in the world, with around 200 million people, speaks Portuguese. Most of its neighbors speak Spanish. Brazil also has the distinction of being the world country where people spend the most time surfing the internet at home. This group is a major consumer of internet video, with a growing tendency to watch television without a TV set. Brazilians are not dissimilar from U.S.audiences with a preference for sports and entertainment.

Image by kevindean via Flickr

With this in mind, it would seem that such online advertising forms as pre-roll and mid-roll video would be ideal for this audience. To those with an online advertising degree, this would seem natural. Perhaps this thinking was behind the founding of IMPAKTU, which bills itself as Latin America’s first digital advertising network specializing in video. They estimate the video advertising revenue for Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico to be around $136 million this year. Last year ComScore crowned EZTarget Media as the leading online advertising network of the U.S. Hispanic market. But this company also operates in Brazil, Argentina and other South American Countries. Meanwhile News Corp’s, Fox One Stop Media is making inroads into this market as well, claiming 72 million unique users, or 88 percent of the internet audience in Latin America. For those targeting Brazil’s users, there’s Hi Midia, a “young but experienced” team that claims inside knowledge of the young and hip web trends.

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