This week’s LATAM Roundup brings you details of Hands Mobile Advertising expansion into other countries beyond Brazil in the Americas; Nielsen and Gfk announce partnership in Brazil to launch a measurement platform in the country; and more numbers about Brazilian e-commerce, which becomes more mobile each day.

Hands: Programmatic to Jump from 4.3% to 30% in 2016

Hands Mobile Advertising is working on their expansion in Latin America with a new marketplace; and programmatic is one of the highlights of their portfolio. In an interview with Karen Ferraz, ExchangeWire Brazil, João Carvalho, CEO, Hands Mobile Advertising, reveals that automation will jump from the current 4.3% of their revenue to 30% this year.

The company, founded in Brazil, has part of e.Bricks Group since 2011, when it was acquired by Pontomobi. Among their inventory, there is the wi-fi media from computer makers, which they sell due to a direct deal with the Brazilian company Positivo.

“We bring to the local programmatic sector a universe that was not [previously] available. Before us, [the market] did not have any SSPs or DSPs selling push messages”, said Carvalho. Hands is putting their adserver in two million wi-fi hotspots in Brazil and looking forward operations in other Latin American countries. Last year, he says some of its clients were multinationals — including the publisher Terra Networks, with a strong presence in other countries in the region: Spain, Portugal, and the Latin American audience in the United States. Their focus in the first international markets will be Mexico and the US, especially Miami. A third country is being analyzed by the team, which aims to have local offices with product and commercial staff.

The move was enabled by their SSP platform M3P, presented during the Mobile World Congress earlier in February, in Barcelona, in partnership with Smart AdServer. They provide rich media HTML5 formats and segmentation, offering push messages, SMS, and wi-fi campaigns.

Carvalho also reveals the strong mobile presence in Brazil. Some of their clients have 70% of their audience in mobile channels, such as InfoMoney, a local publisher. He forecast that around 35% of the inventory in the country is mobile; even though there are several publishers that aren’t ready to trade this media.

Nielsen partners with Gfk To Launch Cross-Media Platform

Nielsen and Gfk announced a partnership in Brazil that will allow them to offer a joint service to measure cross-media campaigns in the country.

Despite the announcement, the solution is not ready or set: they define it as an “on-going discussion”. Nielsen will be responsible for the analytics via the company’s Digital Ad Ratings; whereas Gfk will contribute with data and intelligence about traditional TV audiences. The goal in uniting both services is to make a unique offer to agencies, media companies, and marketers; given that TV still represents an important part of Brazilians’ media combustion.

Yet, they did not give a date for the launch of the solution; which they claim to be the first of its category in the country. It could even be postponed to next year. Stefan Raum, head of measurement and media, Gfk, emphasises that it will enable Gfk to consolidate its expansion plans in audience data in Brazil.

E-commerce in Brazil: more mobile

An eMarketer’s compilation of commerce data in Brazil reinforces mobile growth in the segment. The company published that retail e-commerce orders in Brazil, that were made via mobile devices, reached 14.3% in December, up from 10.1% in June.

The figures exclude transactions with mobile apps, which means the real number representing the mobile sector might be even higher. Crete had 18.6% of all its transactions in Brazil via m-commerce, up from 10% in 2015. 15% of the total of transactions were made via smartphones, way above the 3.5% coming via tablets.

eMarketer forecast that retail commerce sales in Brazil will reach USD$22.12bn (£15.28bn) in 2016, an annual increase of 13.5%.