How to best monetize Latin America (LATAM) Traffic

This post was most recently updated on September 14th, 2021

Latin America is a group of 21 countries located south of the US-Mexico border. Over the past few years the Latin American region, also known as LatAm, has slowly grown to be an economic force to reckon with.

Forecasts state that Latin American advertising revenues will have a 9.3% growth in 2018 which would amount to a market size of $26.3 billion compared to a 7.3% growth in 2017.

Though television advertising remains to be the top media category in Latin America, digital advertising is still expected to grow by 23% and reach 32% of the media share by the end of 2018.

The steady rise in Internet usage in the region will boost the growth in digital advertising with Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia having the highest internet penetration of online populations.

Brazil also remains to be the sixth largest advertising market in the world, and it accounts for over half of Latin America’s advertising spend.

The monetization potential for Latin America, also rightfully labeled as the “Next Great Advertising Ecosystem,” is indeed very promising. LatAm is one the most dynamic advertising regions and publishers should not ignore the potential of traffic coming from this geography.

The question remains, how does one take advantage of ad budgets in this region? One of the critical factors in any traffic optimization/monetization model is understanding what works for specific geographic locations while focusing efforts on areas that would lead to maximizing revenue generation.

Here are MonetizeMore’s suggestions for monetizing Latin American traffic in the most optimal way possible.

#1 – Mobile is king

The Mobile market in Latin America is the fourth largest mobile market in the world.  Smartphones are a necessity, and not a luxury anymore – something that will make the mobile market continuously grow.

Taking advantage of this growth and monetizing mobile traffic will significantly contribute to your site’s revenue.

It is essential first to evaluate your current mobile traffic performance. It would require checking statistics in Google Analytics and Google Ad Manager to analyze key metrics so that you can serve and optimize ads that are relevant to LatAm users.

1. Review your Google Analytics Mobile statistics to determine the level of user engagement and also to gauge how compelling users find your content. Statistics like Bounce rate, Average session duration and Pages per visits can help you with this. Device breakdown reports can also help you understand your mobile site’s visitors – what device have they used to get to your site and how long are they staying on your site.  This report will also help you determine the actual value of your Android vs. iOS split – their actual weights and how much each operating system value is generating.
2. Use your Google Ad Manager Reports to help you understand how well your mobile monetization efforts are performing.  Knowing the what your top performing mobile ad units or ad units with high viewability, as well as the percentage of mobile volume that is going to your low paying, bottom tier ad networks are can help you negotiate better deals and optimize your current stack

It is also important to note that when it comes to Latin American mobile user engagement, sports is a very popular vertical. Most mobile users often search for quick information like match scores or updates of an ongoing football match.

Also, entertainment topics are proven to monetize well as users tend to search and stay engaged with this type of mobile content.

Here are more tips for making your mobile monetization strategy strong and effective:

Strategic ad layout

Always aim to maximize viewability for your mobile ad units. This will require a review of your site’s layout to ensure that your user “eyeballs” are directed to your mobile ads and that there are no ad display issues.

Aim to have your mobile ads fit accordingly with your mobile site’s layout and maximize viewability.

Find mobile ad networks with good demand for Latin American users

We have seen lots of ad networks deliver excellent results for LatAm – this can include those that cater to mobile websites, apps or both.

• Appnexus – one of the top ad exchanges of 2018 and it offers solid revenue streams for a publisher who is aiming to monetize ad impressions via the exchange.
• Yellow Hammer Media Group – 100% fill ad network with a wide variety of campaigns.  They also use demand from Google Ad Exchange which results in higher performance.
• Brightcom – an ad network that caters to both advertisers and publishers.  We’ve seen strong performance for geographical locations such as the US, Latin America, and the Asia Pacific.
• Taboola – one of the best sponsored content networks. Be careful about the implementation of too many “sponsored links” and “stories as it can appear spammy at times.
• Grumft – A premium ad network in Brazil that performs well in Latin America. They offer a personal and simplified service that utilizes the best technology to increase performance and engagement.

For more ad networks visit this guide.

Native advertising

Native ads are effective in boosting engagement as it usually results in twice the visual focus as compared to banner ads. This is because native ads blend well with content which results in higher CTR. These ads are also adaptable and look less “disruptive” compared to traditional types.

Related Read: How to effectively add native ads to you ad stack with DFP

Private Marketplace (PMP) and Private Marketplace Guaranteed (PMP-Guaranteed)

PMP spend has grown over the last few years while it is estimated that PMP impression volume has increased by 22% in 2017.  PMP and PMP-Guaranteed are also expanding outside of the display, mobile, and video into new formats such as radio and TV.

Advantages of PMP and PMP-Guaranteed for the publishers are:

• Good ad quality
• Higher CPMs (guaranteed spend)
• Maintain good partnerships with end buyers vs. an open market situation

Find more information about PMP optimization here: How to Increase your Lift with First Party Data

#2 – Utilize your social traffic

Latin America’s market has one of the highest rates of social media usage, mostly accessed through the mobile internet. According to statistics, more than 95% of the LatAm’s internet users participate in at least one social network.

Use social media to drive users to your site.  Finding the right social media channel is essential when you want to capture and drive users to your website. Publishers can use Facebook to post content from their site – either through their own Facebook account or encouraging users to share their content.

Also, the use of this social media channel can be maximized – revenue wise – by signing up and using the Facebook Audience Network to deliver targeted ads to your users.

Pinterest is also a popular driver of social media traffic – it is now ranked 2nd after Facebook.  Now is the perfect time for publishers to consider having a presence on Pinterest as it has more than 70 million users and it is growing super fast.

Here are also some additional tips on how you can effectively convert casual visitors to repeat users:

1. Understand your audience and tailor your content to appeal to them
2. Make it easy for visitors to see what your site has to offer
3. Provide multiple links to other pages on your site.

Related Read: Facebook Referral Traffic Declines: Pinterest, Google & Instagram Gain Ground

#3 – Video inventory

As mobile traffic began to surge in Latin America, mobile video advertising has also emerged as a leading area of growth in the region.

According to InMobi,  Latin America has made a 40x increase in video ad consumption in Q1 2016 – Q1 2017, especially in Brazil.

Brazil is also ranked as the 3rd country with the highest mobile video ad spend on app install campaigns. This means that as the demand for video content on mobile increases, advertisers will most likely want to invest in mobile video ads.

Find more info about video advertising here.

#4 – Newsletter and user subscription

Newsletter and user subscriptions will increase your chance to improve page views by growing your user base. These newsletters will be another source of revenue for display ads.

One way to help boost your newsletter and user subscription campaigns is by using social media to capture sign-ups.  You could offer a signup incentive or offer users a chance to sign up directly through Facebook or other social media channels.

 #5 – Partner with the best

Partnering with a publisher monetization platform that has the best optimization strategies and growing ad technology lessens a publishers workload and stress of daily ad optimization.

Partner with Monetizemore and we will help you to monetize your Latin America traffic and even more importantly, increase ad revenue for your site.

Sign up for a Starter account at MonetizeMore today!