This week’s LATAM Roundup brings the quotes of Latin American executives during last Thursday's IAB Brazil Ad Tech & Data; a more conservative view about the Latin American market; and finally an overview about video inventory, according to the latest TubeMogul report.

IAB Brazil Ad Tech & Data: Highlights

Last Thursday, in Sao Paulo, leaders of the advertising industry in Latin America came together during the event organised by IAB Brazil — already a tradition every year in August in the country. The main event can be summed up in five topics: how is data currently being used by the industry; improving the relationship between publishers and marketers; quality of inventory in Latin America; planning campaigns in a new paradigm and, finally, transparency and operation models.

The main quotes from the participants highlighted a more critical and mature view of the local market — even if maturity is related to understanding that some players need some time to understand the technology to apply it in the best way. Here, we present the most impacting quotes during the panels (picture is from Twitter/IAB Brazil):

“When the market understands the possibilities of programmatic, we will start to see case studies. We talked about it when the digital market started to develop here, and after some time, advertisers understood it better and created so many awarded campaigns. The same will happen with automation — we just need to give time for people to learn the best use of data.” – Ronaldo Bastos, Marketing and Sales VP, Grupo NZN

“Transparency and media relations in Brazil is something we conquered, we have to keep respecting it. I am not arguing against arbitrage: arbitrage exists, it is a model to do your business. However, it must be clearly spoken. There are companies that define themselves as tech providers when they are not, they are an arbitrage company. Of course they can operate, but this must be transparent.” – Paris Neto, Digital Media Director, Globo.com

“My advice for publisher sales teams is: do not behave like cab drivers who want to stop Uber in the city. Adapt your skills and your work; work in your abilities.” – Andre Vinicius, Advertising and Ad Tech Director, UOL, about the change that programmatic brings to publishers

“A lot of platforms are operating programmatically in Brazil. Atlas was the first of them, in 2006, 2007. Even Yahoo, with Bing, works programmatically. Ad search, from Google, does it too. So, we come to this event and talk about how everything in programmatic is new, but it is actually not.” – Emmanuel Martins, President, Programmatic Committee, IAB Brazil

“Privacy is a topic we cannot dismiss. Comparing to the United States and Europe, Brazil is in a initial-stage position; and far from having something more in regards to legislation — especially if you compare the country to Canada and Europe, with more strict regulations. There is a project working towards a law recently in Brazil that has been discussed with the public, so this will be regulated. IAB Brazil is following it by different committees, including the Law committee, because we must be prepared for this law when it comes. Yet, no one knows when this will happen.” – Cristiano Nobrega, President, Ad Tech and Data Committee, IAB Brazil

“Crossdevice has created too much talk, not action. I believe the volume of matches [in deviceID] is not enough, so only in a few cases you can make the brand work with the offline data synced with the online data. Those are all midterm and longterm projects, because crossdevice isn’t something you can do that quickly.” – Adriano Brandão, Commercial Director, Navegg

“In Brazil, ad blockers are on 6% of computers. This is something that has been growing worldwide, so publishers must think about it when displaying ads in their websites — how will they display them in a non-invasive way.” – Fernando Narcio, Regional Manager LATAM, PubMatic

Did Brazil finally reach maturity? No, not yet.

Cris Camargo, executive direct, IAB Brazil, speaking to Propmark, showed a more conservative view of the maturity of the market in the country.

Cris said she is "concerned" for the future of ad tech, because the moment is critical for developing a skilled workforce. If there isn’t enough capacity to operate the technology, she forecasts the market will have drawbacks in the near future in terms of revenue and growth.

She also mentions the complexity of creating new rules for online media trading in the country. According to her, the current legislation is viable only for offline media — but it doesn’t mean that members of industry are not trying hard to adapt the rules to include programmatic trading.

The full piece can be read here (in Portuguese).

Programmatic video: a lot of growth in pre-roll, a decrease in mobile

TubeMogul’s last report about programmatic video in Brazil shows a considerable increase in pre-roll inventory for desktop in the second quarter of the year — a 29% growth comparing to the previous quarter, and 12-fold growth over the same quarter of 2014.

Pre-roll prices followed this increase, with CPM prices growing in three consecutive quarters.

However, mobile prices — which had been growing since last year’s second quarter — had a significant change during the second half of 2015 Q2, going down for the first time after a consistent period of growth. This sort of inventory decreased 35% in this period, yet TubeMogul emphasises that auctions for mobile video accumulates a 525% increase comparing to last year’s data.

Due to technical issues, the company didn’t disclose viewability numbers. Still, TubeMogul mentions that since advertisers have a better understanding of tradeoffs between investment and performance, they had better numbers. Their clients that used algorithm optimisation tools had 10 percentage points higher than the others.

The TubeMogul report is based on their client base and platforms in Brazil. The full report is available for download.