Programmatic Grabs Headlines At Brazil’s UOL

“We strongly believe in programmatic media and have been encouraging advertisers to use all available alternatives,” says Ricardo Dutra, marketing director of Brazil’s largest online content and digital services company.

Ricardo Dutra has had a long career at UOL, Brazil’s largest online content and digital services company. Since 1999 he has held a variety of positions, including marketing director of the company’s SMB division for nearly six years before his CEO appointment in March.

CMO.com’s LATAM team recently spoke to Dutra about the world of digital publishers.

CMO.com: What have been the main challenges for digital publishers in 2016?

Dutra: The most common challenges for publishers are keeping pace with new trends and demands from this new generation of internet users, [providing an] increasingly more positive mobile experience, and [extracting] the benefits to be gained from social media, whether through traffic that can be generated or through feedback that can come from these platforms. [Another] challenge is to constantly optimize monetization of remnant inventory, which can be generated via programmatic media.

CMO.com: How does UOL integrate data and analytics to leverage traffic?

Dutra: All of UOL’s browsing behavior is studied so that we can learn, among other things, the main ports of entry through which users arrive, as well as exit ports, when users leave the site, which pages have the highest engagement, etc. To conduct these analyses and improve results, UOL uses a series of tools that range from analytics to automated publishers.

CMO.com: How does UOL offer its readers a more personalized experience?

Dutra: Customization is a feature that UOL has been using for some years now. On our home page, within each thematic block covering sports, news, or entertainment, the user can select favorite topics. For our coverage of Big Brother Brazil, we once again offered users the possibility of hiding ads about it.

That’s without mentioning geo-referenced information, such as weather forecasts or election results as the two most obvious examples. In the first quarter we’ll begin testing some new data platforms to deliver personalized content automatically on the UOL home page and our main internal channels.

CMO.com: How does UOL use programmatic media platforms?

Dutra: UOL launched the first Publisher Trading Desk in the country. In other words, UOL uses the entire programmatic media technology ecosystem to provide a complete solution, which includes media, data, technology, and reach. In addition to its large audience and credible, high-quality content, today UOL adds what we call “audience extension” to its media projects.

We use our DMP [data management platform] to reach the advertiser’s target audience, not only on our pages but on any media inventory available in the Brazilian programmatic environment. Additionally, the advertising agency or customer can remotely access and buy advertising space on UOL using a supply-side platform [SSP].

To gain access to this purchase, advertisers just need to have a preferred deal with us. We strongly believe in programmatic media and have been encouraging advertisers to use all available alternatives to optimize their campaigns, engage in remarketing, and integrate their own and third-party data when segmenting.

We also use programmatic media to offer remnant inventory, which today is very sparse, to smaller advertisers, the so-called “long tail.” These are advertisers whose size and investment volume are not served by our sales team. It warrants emphasis that sales to these advertisers abide by the same minimum prices and commercial policies adopted for direct selling.

CMO.com: How does UOL engage its users on mobile devices?

Dutra: We have several actions to engage our users in the mobile sphere. For example, we create apps to meet our audience’s specific needs. We [recently] launched the new version of the UOL Ticker, which notifies users when a stock reaches a certain value and provides newsletters about the market’s closing position. We also have apps for Carnival [CarnaUOL], the UOL Sports Scoreboard, Batepapo [Chat], and we are soon putting up an updated version of the UOL app.

We also send daily notifications of both editions of Giro UOL, a newsletter with the main news of the day up to that time. To facilitate mobile access and consumption on the go, we also provide a podcast version of Giro UOL.

We have also intensified our presence on social media, which are accessed mostly on mobile devices. We have initiatives on all major networks most notably our exclusive content production on Snapchat.