This week’s Latin American RoundUp brings the following news: Publicis Group choose Brazil for their ad tech startup pilot project, which will serve the group's agencies and third-party advertisers with data; eBay sells their stake in Latin American e-commerce Mercado Livre; Snapchat debuts in Latin America through IMS in Brazil, which will represent the social media company commercially in the region; and, finally, a report about Brazilian e-commerce, which represents 60% of the Latin American online sales sector, but locked in bottlenecks to international players.

Publicis Group chooses Brazil for their ad tech pilot project

Publicis Group announced the start of operations of Deepline in Brazil, their pilot project that places an ad tech startup that operates independently to serve the group’s agencies and third-party clients. Their main goal will be to work with data to serve media campaigns using strategies of programmatic media and growth hacking.

The mobile sector will be one of the key markets of Deepline, and the company will work with exclusive formats, artificial intelligence, machine learning, virtual reality, and content marketing. Consulting projects and integration of online and offline media will also be considered.

Pedro Ivo Resende, former CEO and founder of Riot in Brazil (one of the first social media agencies in the country), will be the Deepline’s CEO. “Deepline will not replace the media teams in Publicis’ agencies. Our objective is to bring more knowledge to them”, said Resende. He also clarified that the company will not work with agencies that are not part of Publicis group — in order to differentiate Publicis from competitors.

Deepline was born four months ago as an ad tech incubated in AG2 Nurun, a digital branch of Publicis Group. Marcelo Lobianco, CEO, AG2, was one of their main supporters. In the past three months, Deepline were already independent and running some campaigns in the country.

eBay sell their shares in Mercado Livre

After analysing their investments, eBay decided to sell their shares in the Mercado Livre. The company have participated in Latin American e-commerce since 2011, when Mercado Livre bought the Brazilian iBazar, in which eBay have invested. The deal transferred 19.5% of Mercado Livre’s shares to eBay.

“Selling our shares in Mercado Livre will allow us to gain a significant amount in our investment, and we aim to use these resources according to our strategies of capital”, said eBay’s official statement about the operation. The company reinforced that Latin America’s importance in their strategy remains the same.

The value of the operation, and details of capital investments, will be disclosed in eBay’s quarterly report. It’s worth mentioning that eBay have been revising their investments in shares worldwide. Therefore, they have recently sold their share in Craigslist and also eBay Enterprise division for USD$925m (£761m).

Snapchat debuts in Latin America via IMS

Internet Media Services (IMS) announced they are now representing Snapchat in Brazil for all commercial deals in the country. The ad offers in the social media app will be soon presented to several media agencies and marketers in an event scheduled on this Thursday, 20th of October.

IMS already represent commercially other social media platforms in Latin America, such as Twitter, LinkedIn, and Foursquare, not to mention Apple and Waze in some Latin American companies. Rumours of the opening of Snapchat’s local office in Brazil are also starting to circulate in the market, according to Meio & Mensagem, but nothing has been confirmed by the company so far.

Brazil represents 60% of LATAM e-commerce

A recent report by Americas Market Intelligence states that Brazil represents 60% of the e-commerce market in Latin America, but most online merchants only take advantage of about 17% of it.

Among the reasons for it are local bottlenecks, such as the local credit card market — only 20% of Brazilian’s credit cards are enabled for international payments. Additionally, particularities of the Brazilian e-commerce are also relevant: non-card payment methods are used in 23% of Brazilian sales, and 58% of online sales are made in installments plans.

“Merchants need to replicate the Brazilian shopping experience as much as possible to cater to Brazilian customers”, said Lindsay Lehr, senior director of payments, Americas Market Intelligence, author of the study.

The report also forecasts a 15% yearly growth of the setor in the country, despite the Brazilian negative economic scenario.

Online sales in Brazil are expected to sum up USD$23bn (£18.9bn), placing the country as one of the world’s top 10 e-commerce markets. It represents three-times the second biggest Latin American e-commerce market, Mexico.