In this week’s LATAM Roundup, the e-commerce and marketplace Mercado Livre reveals their growth due to investment in technology and programmatic media, which will have an increased budget in 2017; Teads' commercial teams are focused on interactive video campaigns in Brazil; and, finally, DynAdmic's new COO and CCO in Brazil.

Mercado Livre will increase programmatic budget in 2017

The Latin American digital marketplace and e-commerce Mercado Livre currently has 4o million unique visits, 100 purchases per second, and four million search queries every second. The company has reached those numbers in three years: evolving from sponsored links to a robust digital strategy, now one of the biggest e-commerce marketplaces in Latin America. In 2017, an increased programmatic budget should keep up the trend.

With the acquisition of Google’s full stack in 2016 and DoubleClick solutions, Mercado Livre now uses data to combine different information and build the profile of its users. The company grew their work agencies and advertisers by 93% and their long tail by 93%, in a year-on-year comparison between January and November 2016.

In new advertisers segments, the highlight is in telecommunications, with an increase by 1050% in its activities, and technology, which have grown by 280%.

Alexandra Mendonca, Advertising Digital Manager, Mercado Livre Brazil

According to Alexandra Mendonca (pictured left), advertising digital manager, Mercado Livre Brazil, there was a big change in the company after the technology investment. “The way we saw the results of a campaign has changed. We used to work focused on the category, and now with adoption of tools we achieved a broad vision about user behaviour”, Mendonca said in an interview to ExchangeWire Brazil.

“We used to be restricted to that user profile, for example, a car campaign was targeted to ‘men, upper middle class, married, etc’. After we clustered our audience, we could set several profiles as potential buyers. We grew our revenues a lot, and we also started working on different segments. We now have different clients that don’t necessarily sell in our platform, such as banks, car companies, services, but they do targeted campaigns in our website, focused in our audience”, she explained.

Mendonça also reveals the real start of programmatic media. “We started working strongly with programmatic media and we switched from preferred deals to programmatic guaranteed. We will go on in this direction, our purpose is to grow our budget to automation, since we’ve got it all (audience, traffic, and technology), and also to offer our inventory to brands."

Mobile and video should be the highlight. “Mobile and video are pillars of our strategy to offer the best experience to our users and also the best opportunity for advertisers. Currently, Mercado Livre is 100% mobile-first and we will launch new formats for mobile ads. Video is also a reality for us, but we will focus on it even more”, she revealed.

Teads’ interactive videos technology to be the company focus in Brazil

The video ad tech Teads released their first case studies in Brazil, opening up some numbers about the results of their clients, implying that this should be the main focus for their teams in the country.

The campaign for the online retailer Americanas.com, which went live a few days before Black Friday, used an interactive video to present discounted offers. According to Teads, the conversion rates were four-times higher than other partners’ campaigns, considering 99.7% of impressions.

'Projeta a Vida', from the Brazilian Healthcare Federal Department made by Calia digital agency, reached an engagement rate 2.8-times bigger than other videos made by the government department. The interactive video had the goal to inform the population about diseases that peak during Summer time, such as dengue, zika virus, and chikungunya.

Fabricio Proti, executive director, Teads Brazil, commented that such formats are an opportunity given the economic downturn of the country. “It’s a crisis moment, and the ideal advertisement is one that delivers not only branding, but also performance. That’s what dynamic videos deliver”, Proit said in a statement.

DynAdmic has new CCO & COO in Brazil

DynAdmic announced Marcio Figueira as their new chief commercial officer in Brazil to lead new business and strategy activities in the country. He has 20 years experience in digital advertising, recently at Samba Ads. Figueira has also recently started another role in the local industry, as head of video committee at IAB Brazil, part of the 2017’s team.

Lara Krumholz, general manager, DynAdmic Latin America, justified the new hire by emphasising the company’s special focus on Brazil and its programmatic video market.

DynAdmic has also appointed Gabriel Dias, part of its team since last year, as its new chief operating office in Brazil. Alongside financial and administrative jobs, he is now responsible for the development of new products locally.