Running Media Buying Campaigns in Brazil

I was recently asked by a number of clients about running media campaigns in Brazil. They wanted an overview of things to look out for. I thought it might be useful to reproduce it here. Of course a lot of this applies equally to any country. Hope it's useful!

As with any media buying campaign before you purchase web-traffic, whether it is banner impressions or pop-under advertising, you need to fully understand the market you're hoping to advertise into.

Prior to even thinking about finding a traffic seller or whether your product is right for the Brazilian marketplace, consider first whether internet marketing is the best option - for instance in some countries where broadband penetration is low, attempting to advertise a product which requires faster speed internet access would be fool-hardy.

In Brazil however there are almost 76 million internet users, making it the 4th highest country in the world for internet users behind China, the United States of America and Japan. It is also the 4th largest market in terms of internet hosts with almost 24 million.

As well as having the 5th biggest population in the world, at almost 200,000,000 people, Brazil is one of the biggest economies in the world, and in spite of its economy slowing, in 2011 it overtook the UK to become the world's 7th large economy in terms of GDP.

So in terms of opportunity there are certainly plenty of people to market to in Brazil, and for those looking to advertise to Brazilians online, enough internet users to make Brazil a potentially very profitable market.

Before you go and buy your pop-under advertising, banners or whatever type of traffic you think will work best, think about the people you're looking to advertise to. What is the typical Brazilian like? Demographics cannot be ignored. If you market to the wrong demographics, either in terms of the product you attempt to sell to them, or the manner in which you promote, you'll at best fail to sell your product, and at worst offend and damage any brand value that you may have had.

1. Language - there is little point in displaying online advertising in the wrong language. In Brazil the official and most widely spoken language is Portuguese. Whilst Spanish is spoken in some areas, particularly those bordering countries where Spanish is the official language, focus on the main language. And if you're buying media ensure that you only ask to be sent Portuguese speaking visitors.

2. Ethnicity - think about the product's that you're selling. Are they targeted at one particular ethnic group? If they are, does that ethnic group make up the majority of that country's population? In Brazil almost 54% of the country is white, with 39% being of "mulatto" and 6.2% of the population being black.

3. Religion - again religion in a country may have a big bearing on the product you're looking to promote - it may be the deciding factor in whether you chose to buy online advertising in a particular country or not. For instance some religions may have religious laws or intolerance towards gambling products or certain types of finance. In Brazil the vast majority of people, almost 75% would consider themselves Roman Catholic with Christian Protestants being the second biggest denomination at around 16%.

So having determined that your product is suitable for selling online in Brazil; and having thought about the language and way in which your banner advertisement or landing page that you'll buy pop-under advertising for will be formatted you need to think about finding a traffic seller.

As ever before you sign-up to buy traffic from a media seller, whether it be a well know ad-network or a smaller traffic seller do your home-work. Look up the name of the traffic seller company as well as the person working for them. Have there been any reviews - good or bad? Though remember that often a "good" review may have been written by someone connected with the traffic network, and "bad" reviews claiming traffic has not converted or is a "scam" may be written by a competitor of the traffic network or someone who simply didn't run their campaign properly.

One thing to bear in mind that if an offer is too good to be true it often is! Many traffic sellers now sell pop-under advertising on internet marketing forums and place like Linkedin. They often don't have a website but offer hundreds of thousands of "genuine" visitors for only a few dollars - success guaranteed!

So chose carefully. And once you've chosen your traffic seller only run a small traffic campaign to start with. A genuine and reputable ad-network will not object to you running a small test campaign just to see how the traffic converts for you. Also look at the traffic sellers terms and conditions. A large ad-network may refer to their terms and conditions as an Insertion Oder. The Terms and Conditions (T&Cs) or Insertion Order (IO) are the rules by which you buy traffic. Read them carefully as most ad-networks will put all kinds of things in these rules to ensure that if something goes wrong they don't owe you any money.

Now with your ad-network chosen and your T&Cs or IO signed you're ready to send traffic? Wrong. Before you do anything else make sure you use a fraud traffic detection tool. These browser based applications test all the traffic you've bought as it goes through to your landing page, and tests it for fraud traffic.
Fraud traffic is traffic that is sent by the ad-network and is fake - often bots they've created to trigger a pop-up ad. As the traffic is not human is cannot convert. With some smaller traffic sellers a majority if not all of the pop-ad traffic you're buying could be fake so it's important you know you're not being scammed.

The fraud detection tool will flag and fake and suspicious traffic within your account - so that when your campaign ends you have all the evidence you need to go back to your traffic seller and demand your money back. Alternatively you could ask the traffic seller to send you more pop-under advertising until they've sent you 100% of the genuine traffic you've paid for and are entitled to.

If the traffic seller refuses to refund you at least you know to steer clear of them again. Many bogus traffic sellers will try to argue that your campaign didn't work first time but you should give it another go. Having the fraud detection tool means that you're armed with the knowledge that they're lying.
So use these tools to detect fraud traffic and help increase the conversions of your pop-under or banner campaigns. And where campaigns are profitable at a test stage keep running more campaigns with the same ad-network and increase your budget. But all the time keep looking out for that fake pop-under traffic. Because the moment you let your guard down the traffic sellers will take advantage!