Programmatic Buying in Latin America a need for Transparency and Accountability [REPORT]

comScore, Inc. and MediaMath released results from a new study, The State of Programmatic Buying in Latin America, which analyzed the challenges and opportunities for advertisers, agencies, publishers and technology companies to consider in order for programmatic to reach its full potential. The research was based on 52 individual interviews, conducted between February and June 2016, with executives across the industry in Mexico, Colombia, Argentina and Brazil.

The qualitative study found that multiple changes have helped widen the knowledge about programmatic media buying in LATAM. For instance, the presence of big programmatic players in these countries, with equipment, invoicing, support and local inventories, was cited as positively impacting the marketplace, with MediaMath coming in as the top-mentioned DSP. However, big knowledge gaps remain, especially among advertisers, some of whom stated they are unfamiliar with programmatic while others referred to themselves as “experts.”

“The LATAM market faces a lot of challenges in programmatic but also a lot of opportunities,” said Fernando Juarez, Managing Director, MediaMath Latin America. “Economic factors and complexity around the technology remain obstacles, but increased internet penetration in the region in addition to investment in education and dissemination about buying, selling and use of systems of programmatic media buying will impart more sophistication to the marketing ecosystem.”

“This study confirms what we suspected, that transparency into where ads are running is a top priority for media buyers to gain confidence for trading programmatically,” stated Iván Marchant, comScore´s VP for Mexico, Peru and Colombia. “If we want to reach the full potential of programmatic, we need to work harder as an industry to deliver the transparency and campaign results that advertisers need to invest in programmatic.”

Key findings of the study include:

•     Across advertisers, agencies and publishers, the top barriers to programmatic adoption were the lack of education in the market and the absence of transparency into how and where media was traded in programmatic environments.
•     There is a belief in Latin America that there are few marketing professionals with the required knowledge of programmatic buying, thus making education a key focus to enable growth.
•     A limited amount of advertisers use their first-party-data to guide their campaigns.  Helping brands get more from their own data and how to enhance it with second and third-party data will improve programmatic targeting and results.

To download report CLICK HERE.