Weekly Latin American RoundUp brings the following stories: IVC audits Ad Blocker's situation in the country and finds out that, for some publishers, 30% of their audience do not view ad campaigns; Brazilian Court bans WhatsApp for not complying with local investigation about organised crime; Predicta gets Double Click Media's certification; TailTarget is now certified to operate Google's DCM, TubeMogul partners with Navegg.

Ad blockers reach South America

The Brazilian IVC, the institution that audits the audience of media in the country, partnered with the American Alliance for Audited Media (AAM) to understand what is the reach of ad blockers in Brazil. A pilot with the AdBlock Detector estimated that 15% of Brazilian publishers have ad campaigns that are not shown because of software.

The institutions estimate that 10% of Brazilian internet users have some kind of ad blocker in their browsers. “There are two immediate problems we need to understand: how far do ad blockers reach among the Brazilian inventory and how much income is lost”, said Pedro Silva, executive president, IVC.

IVC also found that in some websites, the audience with ad blockers surpasses 30%; whereas other publishers can be proud of only 6% of their audience using the same software. The institutions did not disclose the name of the companies associated with the numbers.

Brazilian Court Blocks WhatsApp; Industry Raises Concerns

Last Thursday (18 December), a Brazilian court blocked WhatsApp for two days. The decision was reverted after another court ruling, twelve hours after the software was already down in millions of mobile devices in the country.

Brazil is one of the strongest markets for the messaging platform — which underwent a USD$22bn acquisition by Facebook last year. The company claims that WhatsApp is on 100 million mobile devices in Brazil.

The blocking happened after WhatsApp denied to collaborate with an investigation about organised crime in Brazil, supposedly involving drug trafficking. Local authorities had control over mobile calls, but ordered WhatsApp to open their data after realising that the suspects were communicating via WhatsApp instead conventional calls. As WhatsApp refused to cooperate, the judge ordered the cut in the services.

The story does not have an end yet — the company will be fined for not collaborating with local authorities. Yet, it was the topic of debates among media professionals, especially because of the presence of foreign companies in the country with commercial representation only, but have all administrative decisions overseas.

Predicta now offers DoubleClick Campaign Manager to SMB

Predicta will offer DoubleClick Campaign Manager (DCM) to its clients. The company’s portfolio was enhanced after achieving the certification to operate the platform directly, and a partnership with Google announced earlier last week.

The company has been using DCM for some of its clients, such as Volkswagen and Visa, through their partnership with AlmapBBDO agency. Now, Predicta will operate the platform via its own ad server, supporting media trading, planning and operations.

“There is the potential to increase our revenue now that we have access to ad budgets from SMBs, which were not investing in digital until then”, said Henrique Paulino, commercial manager, Predicta.

Brazilian Tail Target announces a data marketplace platform

Tail Target announced its data marketplace platform, allowing publishers to work on their audience clusters for targeted campaigns. Paulo Planet, COO, Tail Target, said that clients were already using the platform — but in their environments. With the new product launch, they will be able to do so in other environments.

Navegg and TubeMogul join efforts

TubeMogul announced a partnership with the Brazilian DMP Navegg. The deal allow advertisers to use Navegg’s services in TubeMogul’s platform via open exchange and publisher-direct.

“Audience data is a critical part of the success of digital marketing in Latin America and abroad. Navegg has one of the most diverse data sets in the region and this partnership allows our clients to increase their efficiency and ROI using their data”, said Adriano Hayashi, country manager, TubeMogul Brasil.

Headquartered in Sao Paulo, Navegg is active in Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, Spain, and the United States.