In this week's LATAM Roundup, we have the following stories: ABC Group and DDB Latina announce the start of Track ad agency in Brazil; MediaMath and Global Data Bank announce a deal on data onboarding in the country, which promises to decrease data integration from 20 days to minutes; and finally another survey about ad blockers usage shows that 64% of Brazilians internet users are now using the resource, above the world average.

ABC Group bring DDB Latina agency, Track, to Brazil

ABC Group bring Track, a DDB Latina agency, to Brazil in a joint partnership with Rocker Heads. The agency is specialised in marketing solutions and communication services integrating data with CRM systems.

Track has the biggest digital network of the DDB group, and interprets clients data to create insights and opportunities for the brands to interact with their customers. They have around 200 brands in their portfolio, such as Volkswagen, Coca-Cola, and McDonald’s.

“Track's arrival in Brazil and their strong structure in Latin America is a result of a positive opportunity created through ABC Group partnerships with Omnicom”, said Guga Valente, CEO, ABC Group, in a statement. Sergio Baldasari, former CEO, Rocker Heads, will be in charge of Track’s operations, leading the Brazilian-based team.

MediaMath announce data onboarding partnership with Global Data Bank

MediaMath and Global Data Bank, a Brazilian first-party data company, announced a partnership to simplify offline data onboarding and audience tech.

The partnership allows MediaMath platform users, agencies, or advertisers, to cross reference their CRM data with demographic data, in real time and no extra cost, activating the DSP. The deal is being mentioned by the company as big progress, since it currently takes 20 days to do this kind of matching – not to mention the costs.

In 2016 alone, onboarding data generated USD$250m (£193m), according to the companies. They expect the market to reach USD$1bn (£775m) by 2020. “This is the advertisement market’s Holy Grail. Now you can attach your online or offline clients with offers and opportunities in our DSP and activate media buying in minutes”, commented Mario Rubino, country manager, MediaMath Brazil.

According to John de Tar, co-founder & director, Global Data Bank, it’s "one of the best moments" to invest in data onboarding and ensure audience validation. “MediaMath’s partnership will be essential to accelerate our objectives”, he said.

Another study about ad blockers: 64% of Brazilians now using the resource

A new study about ad blocker usage shows that more than half (64%) of Brazilian internet users are now using ad blockers. The data from Ipsos Public Affairs shows that the Brazilian percentage is above the worldwide average, which is 57%. In the overall ranking of countries, though, Brazil is in the sixth position.

Also, 65% of Brazilians classify internet ads as “irrelevant” and 80% believe that they make browsing slower. The report heard more than 18,000 people in 23 countries, from September 2016 to October 2016.

In an interview with Valor Economic, Danilo Cersosimo, director, Ipsos Brazil, said the local results were surprising, because it’s known in the market that Brazilians tend to be more positive about internet advertising since they spent more time online than the worldwide average.