Monthly Archives: March 2012

Brazil garners attention for ad spending

As increasing attention in global marketing is being focused on the Latin American market, Brazil, sitting at the #6 economy in the world, has shown particularly astronomical increases in media growth and ad spend, with 2012 projected to surpass all existing bench markers.

IBOPE reports that in 2011, total ad spend in Brazil went up 16% to top 88.3 reales, the US equivalent of $51 billion, an increase of about 8% from 2010.

Leading the pack in terms of ad spend was free TV, with about 53% of total spend. Meanwhile, while pay TV has grown 118% since 2008 (the audience is currently 40 million strong), ad spend is only about 7%. Total TV spend is down a few percent from 2010, as heavier emphasis has been placed on digital.

Both IBOPE and IAB Brasil report that 5.3 billion reales (US $3 billion) was the total ad spend for online in 2011. This is a significant 69% increase compared to 2010, during which advertisers spent 3.1 billion reales for online advertising.  Interestingly, 50% of Brazil’s 2011 online ad spend went to search and the other 50% was for display.

As a result of increased digital spend and activity, heavy-hitting American brands have opened up shop in Brazil— Netflix, Google, Facebook and Yahoo, to name a few. These companies now compete with top Brazilian brands like UOL, iG and Globo.com.  Still, 75% of the page views in Brazil are generated by just 7 Web sites: AOL, Earth, iG, Globo.com, Google (including search, YouTube and Orkut), Microsoft Live and Yahoo. Additionally, 31.1 million Brazilians visit e-commerce sites every month; coupon sites alone grew 379% in visitors between May 2010 and May 2011.

Sitting at a surprising number two in ad spend in Brazil in 2011 was newspaper, while magazines ended up slightly behind pay TV.

From a consumption standpoint, newspaper circulation yielded a 3.5% increase in circulation and a 7% increase in subscription since 2010. In fact, 11% of the Brazilian population reads the newspaper every day. Meanwhile, magazines subscriptions were up 5% year over year, and subscriptions doubled!

The following is a survey of media outlets Brazilians most admire:

  • Free TV network: TV Globo
  • Pay TV channel: GNT, which is from the Globosat cable network
  • Magazine: Veja
  • Radio network: CBN
  • Internet portal: Google

Join us for our weekly #RRchat

Hey you! Yes, you, the one reading this blog entry in between checking your Twitter stream and Facebook and all of the other things that you probably are not paid to do, but weave into your workday to keep it interesting.

We’re not knocking you. Social media and surfing the web ARE part of the workday in some ways, because they’re great tools to use to keep up with industry news, trends, and engage in discussion with both clients and other ad folks. At least that’s how you justify it to your boss while you look at pictures of cats using bad grammar.

Since you’re online all day anyway, make it productive — join us Friday from 3-4 p.m. Pacific time for our weekly Twitter discussion about all things advertising. Follow @rrpartners on Twitter and each week, you can give us your thoughts and insight on three short marketing-themed questions. Be sure to use #RRchat in your replies so we can retweet and holler back.

To give you a head start, here are the questions we’ll be tossing out to the Twittersphere this week. Read over them, formulate your responses and get ready to have some fun banter with other marketing agency tweeps!

Question 1: Do you think if a brand has a social presence, you are more likely to purchase from that brand over one that doesn’t? What’s the value in a brand name?

Question 2: Facebook may be rolling out a dating component. Would you date on FB?

Question 3: A recent study says Klout may not be an accurate view of your social influence. What do you think?

Don’t forget the #RRChat hashtag, and hope to see you every Friday from 3-4 p.m. Pacific!

Digital Content Developer/Social Media Specialist Sal DeFilippo contributed to this article.

Marketing, Monetization and Privacy, oh my!

WAP’s and apps seem to be top of mind for clients, marketers and industry experts alike for the last 6 or 12 months.  This sort of focus tends to cause us to rush into mobile development without a clear strategy and solid privacy policy.  Earlier this month, I was able to attend the Digiday Mobile Summit in order to ensure we weren’t blindly following this trend just because.

One speaker really stuck out to me because of his candid views on mobile and its current role in marketing.  Matt Szymczyk of Zugara stated that marketers tend to only think as marketers and gloss over the needs of the consumer.  His exact statement was “Think like a consumer, not a marketer.”  While it seems like a pretty obvious statement, I think we, as marketers, are always chasing that next big idea that’s going to wow our clients or the industry.  This blind ambition comes at the expense of catering to our consumers.  The main question we need to ask ourselves is “What problem does this ‘next big thing’ solve for the consumer?”

QR codes are a perfect example.  In their infancy, I prepared a deck that discussed what they were and how we could utilize them to help tie the online experience to the offline world, dragging metrics and analytics behind it.  In my excitement I had failed to consider that the consumer wasn’t educated on this new technology and assumed adoption would be as inevitable as the demise of feature phones.  My mistake was solving for a marketing need, not a consumer need.  To this day, QR codes aren’t widely used or even understood by the vast majority of the population (except for young affluent males, according to ComScore) because they don’t solve a problem or enhance the consumers’ lives in any significant way.

One company that has enhanced consumers’ lives is Kiip.me.  Brian Wong (CEO of Kiip) sat on a panel discussing what publishers could learn from gaming.  Contrary to what his young age would imply, he had some unique insights into marketing that I found interesting.  If you’re unaware, Kiip (pronounced ‘keep’) goes beyond standard banner ads to provide consumers tangible rewards in a virtual environment.  For example, if I’m able to clear an Angry Birds level with 3 stars, I could be shown a voucher for a small order of fries at Carl’s Jr. (Hardee’s for you Midwest folks), where I’d simply have to provide my email address to obtain.  As Mr. Wong put it, the moment you reach the achievement is euphoric and Kiip monetizes that moment.

As a gamer, I can appreciate the moment you unlock an achievement and the feeling associated with it.  While the achievement itself is intangible, everything leading up to that achievement makes it a sensational moment.  Whether you’ve battled your way through a dungeon for 15 hours or you were finally able to make the cement block fall on top of the little green pig, the accomplishment makes all the effort and frustration worth it.  Adding to the elation by giving me something I can actually use?  That’s absolutely amazing and I will likely always have a positive perception of the advertiser, despite having to provide a small bit of personal information.

I must caveat that by saying that I’m in the minority when it comes to privacy and personal information.  To me, providing a bit of personal information in return for free content is a tradeoff I’m willing and able to accept.  I’m even fine with companies tracking my behavior online to help target ads that they think I’d be more inclined to be interested in.  However, the discussion by Chris Babel (CEO of TRUSTe) and Leslie Dunal (VP of Privacy, Policy and Trust at Yahoo) really make me question my previously held beliefs (a discussion with my director about privacy and worst-cast-scenarios afterwards didn’t help).

What has caused me pause, both personally and professionally, was the realization that the vast majority of mobile applications (and even some websites) don’t have a privacy policy and those that do have more holes than Swiss cheese.  Take that and compound it by the ability for nefarious types to hack into databases on a whim (not even government databases are safe) and I’m taking my online privacy a lot more seriously.  I will actually read through privacy policies now, looking not only for how they’ll use my information, but how long they intend to keep my information on file – which is the bigger threat, in my opinion.  Marketers need to also ensure the companies they are working with and the applications/websites they may represent have a solid privacy policy.  If you’re considering building your own application and/or mobile site, I encourage you to visit www.truste.com/mobile for more information on privacy.

Manifestation of screened interactions

Screened interactions are popping up just about anywhere you can imagine. From fast food chains to high end retail stores, you can expect to have a more digitally enhanced shopping experience.

McDonald’s fast food chains in Europe have started implementing touch screen kiosks in place of humanoids to help take orders and money. “What’s next?” one might ask, computers to flip the hamburgers?

“It had to happen. Supermarkets have already started the shift in this direction, installing self-service tills so that their customers end up doing all the work.” — Giles Turnbull.

“The downsides? Hmm, touchscreen computers in a place stacked full of fried food. Sticky, greasy finger marks all over the screen. Ewww.” — Giles Turnbull.

Retailers are also jumping aboard the proverbial “touch screen” bandwagon.

“Retailers are placing interactive touch screens in and outside of stores to provide a more immersive and engaging experience.” JWT Intelligence.

The mass adoption of touch screens is escalating the number of digital screens with which consumers can potentially interact. Great! That’s just what we all need, another consumer touch point. These screens are not cheap and installation certainly isn’t free, which means that more and more of these units will begin to carry advertising to subsidize the cost. Our guess is that they will end up being a part of a digital network where you can purchase inventory in targeted locations like restaurants, retail stores and many others.

Note: Assistant Media Planner/Buyer Melody Loveday co-authored this article.