São Paulo – Latin America, the Middle East and Africa are the regions in which the Internet has grown most over the last 10 years, according to the Internet World Stats site, which shows the evolution in the number of users around the world from 2000 to 2010. In Brazil, the number of people connected to the Internet is almost 74 million and the Brazilians are record holders in terms of time online, according to Ari Meneghini, the executive director at the Interactive Advertising Bureau in Brazil (IAB Brazil), an organisation dedicated to fostering the use of digital media.
In this scenery, companies have a greater and greater need to promote their products and services on the Internet. Meneghini informs, for example, that expenses with digital advertising rose 20% in Brazil in February, whereas the share turned to TV rose 16%; in newspapers, the growth was 14% and, in the case of magazines, there was an 18% reduction. “This is a process that has been taking place since 2006. Every year, Internet advertising grows more,” pointed out the executive.
And the tendency is for this expansion to be even greater. According to Meneghini, the online advertising market should grow 25% this year and revenues should reach 1.5 billion reals (US$ 930 million). He pointed out, however, that this figure is underestimated, as many companies do not reveal how much they make in the business, and the Brazilian branch of Google is among them.
Last year, advertising expenses on the Internet totalled little over 1.2 billion – also an underestimated figure -, which represented 4.64% of the advertising share throughout Brazil. In developed nations, like the United Kingdom, for example, this share is two digits.
Companies
But some companies already invest way over the average for the media. This is the case with Fiat, which aims to turn 10% to 15% of its advertising budget to digital media this year. “In recent years, the funds turned to digital media have been growing exponentially,” said the Advertising and Relationship Marketing Director at the company for Latin America, João Batista Ciaco. “As our consumer spends more time on-line, we have to change our communication strategy with him,” he added.
Ciaco said, for example, that 70% of brand buyers visit the products on the Internet page before going to a dealer. The Fiat sites receive on average 2.5 million visitors a month, according to him. “If consumers have a good experience in the virtual world, there are greater chances of winning him.”
In this respect, the company challenge is to plan its communications strategy in an integrated manner. The carmaker, according to Ciaco, uses traditional media, or mass media, to advertise a release, guiding consumers to other media, where they may collect more specific information. He recalled the case of the release of the New Uno, last year.
“We opened a communications channel for the release. Anyone could inquire about the car, from engineering to communications strategies,” pointed out the director. This week, Datafolha institute identified Fiat as the car brand most recalled by Internet users. For the fifth year running, the company won the Internet Top of Mind Award, promoted by portal UOL.
Among the advantages of the Internet, Ciaco mentions the greater company integration with consumers, different from traditional media, where “only the brand speaks”, as well as the possibility for “immediate adjustment to our communications” and “a very clear return of results”.
Meneghini, from IAB, points out that on the Internet it is possible, for example, to check whether the user truly opened the page in which the ad is placed and whether he clicked on the advert. “In a magazine, it is not truly possible to know whether readers have read the advert.”
“The Internet constantly shows itself as an extremely efficient media, in which the measurement of return is easy, providing us with scale and simultaneously allowing us to reach specific audiences for our guided actions,” added Andrea Pinotti Cordeiro, Institutional Marketing director at Itaú bank, another company that makes great use of digital media in its advertising strategy.
Ahead
Internet advertising expenses should continue rising above other medias in coming years. The IAB estimates that the share of digital business in the Brazilian advertising sector should reach 12% in 2014. Meneghini recalls that, in a country with over 190 million inhabitants, the Internet still has much space for growth.
And that is what companies are betting on. “We have sufficient reasons to continue investing in Internet,” said Andrea, from Itaú. “The growth of users and the potential use of the net on mobile devices makes it possible for us to strengthen the points of contact with audiences in the most varied of age and income groups,” she said. Click on the link below to read about the sector in the Arab market .
*Translated by Mark Ament
