In the first Monday of 2016, we bring the LATAM Roundup to you with an overview of the digital sales in Brazil during Christmas; fraud and piracy’s impact in the local market; and a recap of programmatic media’s numbers in 2015, with the forecast for 2016.
Brazilian ecommerce during Christmas
Ecommerce in Brazil saw a 26% increase in transactions in 2015, compared to the previous year’s performance. Online sales reached R$7.4bn (approximately £1.26bn), according to numbers revealed by E-bit and Buscapé late last week. Numbers consider the period between 15/11/2015 and 24/12/2015.
The result was above the market’s forecast for the holidays, which was a growth by 22%, reaching R$7.2bn (£1.23bn) in transactions.
According to E-bit and Buscapé, 9,3 million users used the internet for their Christmas shopping, a 17.2% increase considering the number of online consumers in the same period of 2014. Additionally, mobile ecommerce grew by 13.6% in the same comparison.
CENP: “Piracy and fraud threatens digital market in Brazil”
In their December edition, CENP — the entity that regulates the advertising market in Brazil — exposed concerns about piracy and frauds in the digital universe in the country. The entity classifies Brazilian online piracy as a “digital schizophrenia”, especially after robots populated debates in the government, when the topic was raised by a congressman related to an investigation into online crime. At the moment, the investigation was focusing efforts in finding out if automated ad trading was the cause behind government campaigns placed in piracy websites and other non-trustworthy web pages.
Latin American programmatic market’s performance
Meanwhile, the research companies don’t reveal the consolidated numbers from 2015, previous reports and moves in the Latin American market show a heated scenario for automation in Latin America.
IDC has previously released a forecast that programmatic would have a 600% spike in the region, reaching USD$4m in revenue. In 2016, the consulting group expects USD$12m in revenue, increasing by 198% on a yearly basis.
At the same time, 2015 was marked by RPA, the first publish co-op in Latin America, in Argentina — putting together local giants like La Nación and Grupo Clarín. The acquisition of RealMedia by AppNexus, marking the company’s move into the region, was also big news last year.
In Brazil, some big acquisitions such as Omnicom of Grupo ABC, worth USD$1bn; and the launch of ProG, Globo.com’s programmatic initiative, also demonstrated direct moves in the local space.
As raised by Maren Lau, CMO, CMS Internet Media Services, earlier last year in a eMarketer’s interview, geolocation, mobile and programmatic are hot topics for Latin America and Brazil in the coming year. Automation as an opportunity to monetise the medium to long tail, or even unlocking the potential of additional sales channels, putting the market in a privileged position, despite the general economic downturn in economies such as Brazil and Argentina.
It’s worth mentioning that although Mexico and Brazil are always in the spotlight, Latin America in general is an interesting region, according to Maren, given its potential to gain strong scale.