Search Marketing in Latin America Archives

The final session of the SES Latino conference, Nacho welcomes...

Ian McAnerin to focus on the technical stuff. The accent "misspelling" problem, they don't enter in the special characters into the search box. To a computer, this is a completely different word. However, the practice is so common that marketers need to be able to capture the people looking for these misspellings. Search engines also want to provide results that help users. Issue is that treating and é as an e (nice i figured out how to make an é), can potentially result in completely different result set. Montreal versus Montréal has huge difference in search volume, also Mexico and México. The content issue is that many web sites cannot misspell words due to legal or quality issues. Marketers are not usually willing to just walk away from the keywords. A search engine will usually attempt to order the results based on the most accurate response to a query first. Even if it shows alternative spelling content, they will generally put the exact match above the best guess. This means you cant really on the search engine to solve the problem for you. He showed the ranking difference between Mexico and México on Google.com. He created a fake word named "altwrittén," www.mcanerin.com/EN/articles/keyword-misspelling-test.asp. Keyhword chosen b/c is was nonsense and contained a special character that exists... Turns out MSN and Yahoo both treat the é as an e (you show up but order may change). Google does not, you do not show up. Worked with anchor text, title, hidden css, noscript, alt tags (link and not linked) and URL. Did not work with keyword meta tag, dc metatag, comments and bookmarks. Suggested solutions; (1) It looks unprofessional to have multiple spellings on the same page. You can use links within the alt text, URLs, incoming anchor text and noscript area can place those misspellings. (2) Avoid moving into the hidden text cloaking areas. (3) Anchor text is not only content for the target page, but also content on the source page. International Coding, use the doctype "EN" for English, ES for Spanish, the "-us" is USA Spanish, es-mx, es-us, es-es, es-are, etc. He said currently search engines do not use the localized country part of the language tag, but they may in the future.

Christian Van Der Henst is up again. There is a great opportunity to develop for the Spanish market. He shows some of the top ten languages on the Internet; Spanish users are a big part of the market (6.4%). The content evolution by language is putting Spanish behind other languages, Spanish is not growing. 45% of the web is written in English, Spanish is 4.6% of the Web, and its losing ground (he said "field" on the Internet). Spanish grammar has special characters; ñ, å, é, î, ó, ü, ú (sweet! just took me two days to try). He used Google trends to figure out if people are using the special characters and the search volume is low, like Ian showed. He showed papå, versus papa (without the å it means pope). "Grammatics?" When people search, they do not care about Spanish grammar. The search results differ between special characters and without them. You have to promote your web sites without using the right grammar. Where should you avoid using the accent mark? Title, META tags, and title= and alt=. You avoid them in the header tags, only if it is in upper case, because that is somewhat acceptable in the language. He then told a long story, but we really did not have time for it in this session. Nacho, I believe, is getting antsy, but I can be wrong.

Sylvio Lindenberg from MPG Brazil to talk from a Brazilian perspective. Brazil is the only Portuguese speaking nation in the Americas. The language is somewhat different from Portugal. Brazilian Portuguese is different from Ameridian. Portuguese and Spanish are very different. There are some similarities; it can be tricky (kinda got lost there). Regional Expressions in Brazil, funny examples. There are also translation issues, and doing it right is hard. Misspellings is an issue, happens often, example "johnson and johnson" versus "jonhson and jonhson." There are few tools and limited research in Brazil. Also understand user characteristics and habits, they are just a bit behind of America, so what happened in the US 5 years ago, will happen in Latin America. Do not have a single web site to target all of Latin America. If you must, use Neutral Spanish. If you want to rank well, then use local spanish approach. His methodology; the technology analysis is done in-house, and the context and content study is done with the local office.

Andy Hagans from Text Link Ads is now up to talk about advanced link building. Now localized versions need link building efforts. Link buying is buying links on various Web sites. The more links you have the higher you rank. Benefits of buying links, direct traffic + link popularity + branding + spidering, in the splash background of the Search Engine Watch Web site. Link popularity indicators include Google PageRank, or a link search on Yahoo! or MSN Search, but the best indicator is a page's ranking in a search engine, if it ranks well, then it is properly trusted. He shows bad rented links, in the footer of the web site, all jumbled together, search engines (except MSN) have learned to filter these links out). The best part of the page to get a link from is in the primary content (looks like the AdSense heat map). If you buy links, check the cache page in Google to see if the link is within Google, that means the link is counted. Link Baiting: creating content (articles, tools, programs, etc.) that passively attains links due to its intrinsic value. Pros: it is white hat, and it is cheap. Cons: takes time and creativity. Common Types of link bait; useful tools, results lists, controversial articles, contests, exclusive news, evergreen content and anything useful, remarkable or entertaining. He shows some real world examples...

Disclaimer: I type as fast as I can, there are grammar errors, typos and more issues with this. I do my best to be as accurate as possible. But due to the nature of "real time" coverage, there will be issues.

Brad Geddes from Local Launch is up first to give an overview of language and targeting options. Most common forms of Spanish language targeting; english web sites targeting spanish speakers, and many other options. There are many possible configurations (keyword, ad copy, audience). Google AdWords Language Options: they have a language settings under the campaign settings, this is based on user preference set by user at Google.com. Keyword & ad copy use; no restrictions as to the language of the keywords, ads and non for mixing and matching keywords and ad languages. There is a quality score that will regulate this, so the restrictions are not needed as much. Yahoo! Search Marketing Language Options; allows English or spanish keywords, they will allow english or spanish ad copy and there are restrictions; spanish keyword must trigger spanish ads, spanish ads must lead to spanish landing pages, and some more. Microsoft adCenter only supports English and French, so give MSN feedback. Geographic targeting, most common location targeting options are country targeting or region targeting. Country targeting can be done at Google AdWords (multiple countries can be targeted with one campaign (don't use the same campaign, but you can), Microsoft adCenter allows it also, same deal as Google, but Yahoo search marketing allows one account per country and in Q1 2007, you will be able to link accounts. Top 10 Hispanic Markets; LA, NY, Chicago, Miami, Houston, Dallas, San Francisco, Phoenix, and Harlingen. Regional Targeting; IP targeting, Specific Geographic based campaigns (ip based and keyword based), country & territory based companies (targeting country and keyword based). He then shows geographic permutations for keywords (Florida Pizza, Miami Pizza, etc.). Reach your target audience, location (ip/keyword), languages, and ppc inventory.

Paul D. Saffery from SilverDisc Chile was up next. Spanish is a much less standard language than English. Not only in pronunciation, but also in vocabulary. Spanish speaking territories can vary greatly in many ways; population, Internet penetration, wealth distribution, geography and psychology. Challenges specific to Spanish; the nature of the ad business, what jargon does your target audience expect from the business you are advertising? The nature of your target audience? The answers to these questions will help you decide to use neutral Spanish or country-specific Spanish. There are 14 different variations of Spanish. Issues about the SPanish language; text length (more characters compared to English), translation non-expstent or "poor," accents, non-unique translations and non-unique meanings. Is advertising in Spanish worth the effort? Only if your landing page is in same language, only if you access the user base, you access the demographics. You need to research number of users, broadband penetration, the spread of wealth, the demographics, the psychographics and the postal service. Selling PPC: the competition of traditional advertising media, market granularity (hot versus cold keyword judgment), awareness about the importance of measuring ROI. Make sure you communicate, get your audience to trust you, and don't deceive your clients.

Frank Watson from FXCM. He said foreign languages are the most profitable. Use keyword inserts, it has better results when compared to English usage of it (in terms of CTR). Use single keywords, the Spanish market is young, more likely to search on one word versus two or three, so be aware of broad-matching. Don't compete with yourself, when you need multiple accounts - you can bid against yourself - just be careful. Create coherent categories and groups, use multiple messages and test them. AussieWebmaster - big budgets...

Alexandre Kavinski from HotList is going to talk about mostly Portuguese case studies. SEM is about results, the WORDS are the means to the results. He shows two examples of bad translation. Challenges, cultural aspects, different languages, different vocabulary, different user profiles, different web use habits and more. When preparing a campaign you need to understand all these items. You should know which product or services are important, how people see a brand or label, what are ones strengths and weaknesses, and how is our competition positioned and what are my clients searching for. You should have different ad management styles for each country. Each country may have its own objective, which areas are a priority, so managing the results locally is important. A good report should support web site strategies definitions, should highlight user profile differences on each country, should bring up strategic information that may be used by marketing department even offline.

Jessie Stricchiola from Alchmist Media is last up to go over click fraud issues on a general level. She talks about the first sign she has seen click fraud, I remember when she presented this data at an SES a while back --- ohhh memories. She presented it back in 2001. She explains that some people make some extreme claims about click fraud to it threatening the global economy to it being immaterial. The search engines have definitions of click fraud, "click spam," "invalid clicks," and so on. She lists some more definitions, as quotes. How is click fraud generated; manually generated clicks, clicks from hitbots, clicks from spyware, and clicks from email distribution. There are now auditing providers; ppc trax, vericlix, hitslink, clicklab, adwatcher, clickrisk, whosclickingwho, and so on and the list is growing daily (demand is growing for this daily). CPC advertising agreements; advertisers are agreeing to pay for all clicks from publishers, regardless of their source or quality, they agree to limit the time frame in which they can dispute their PPC bills to 60 days, they agree to limit the data used in the investigation of the dispute to the publisher's data only - publishers are not required to look at any data from the advertiser, and they are agreeing to pay for any number of volume of clicks - no matter what amount of clicks may be retroactively found to be fraudulent after further investigation - as only "credits" and not refunds, are issued. Click fraud concerns; publishers are communication that they are in a safe ad environment, publishers are not working together to create a uniform method of scoring click validity, and publishers have not yet created a uniform methodology for data submission. What advertisers can do about it? Begin benchmarking and auditing your PPC data, document your tracking and analysis for future use, perform 60 day audits consistently, establish and maintain close relationships with publishers to address click fraud related problems as soon as they are identified, communicate to publishers - tell them what you need from them to create a safer advertising environment.

Disclaimer: I type as fast as I can, there are grammar errors, typos and more issues with this. I do my best to be as accurate as possible. But due to the nature of "real time" coverage, there will be issues.

Nacho introduces the panel and the session. I am looking forward to this. I expected more people here but I guess they are all interested in "link building."

Ian McAnerin McAnerin Networks is up first to talk about International Domain Issues.

Domain Issues - Subdomains:
Subdirectories are domain.com/brasil/
Subdomain is brasil.domain.com
Domain is domain.com.br

Rule of thumb: Choose based on IBL linking patterns and number of pages. The subdirectories have light IBL, small number of pages, Subdomain is moderate IBL, moderate number of pages, Domain has heavy IBL and large number of pages.

The further removed from the main domain, the less freely the internal link weight seems to flow. Subdirectory > Subdomain > Domain (how link juice flows). Subdomains and second domains are better if you have multiple locations, multiple CMS and/or multiple IP addresses. If geolocation or multiple languages are involved, I strongly recommend subdomains or full secondary domains.

Suggested Best Practices:
Separate countries on separate domains (takes advantage of letting the engines know you have a a .mx site and should be in Google Mexico), separate languages on subdomains and separate topics in subdirectories. This is not the hard and fast rule.

Three types of domain redirection:
(1) Permanent redirection = 301 redirect
(2) Temporary redirection = 302 redirect
(3) Alias / Parking = 200 OK

An alias isn't technically a redirect, but is commonly used as if it were one. Search engines usually try to treat these properly, webmasters often use them improperly.

Domain A
   |--------------------------------> Domain C
Domain B

Alias / Parking 200 OK
Domain A and Domain B are just different names for the canonical domain - aka the big kahuna (domain C) -- (personally, I see this all over the place). Because different names are involved there can be a period where the search engine thinks they are separate sites, and can treat them as such, splitting PR and possibly treating one as a duplicate site.

Most SEOs ask you to stay away from this Alias/Park method.

Permanent Redirect 301
Domain A and Domain B are no longer treated as sites, and are treated as if they were the Big Kahuna (domain C). This is usually the safest and best redirection method. No theoretical limit to the number of domains that can be redirected. All links are passed on, but geolocation aspects of the redirected domain is lost. This can be bad, if you want to rank well in a local search engine, such as Google Mexico. Keep that in mind.

Temporary Redirect 302
Domain C is treated as a temporary location, and the redirected domain is the Big Kahuna. This works fine unless there is more than once 302 redirect - you can't have more than one Big Kahuna (canonical issue). This causes a lot of problems. The default standard is a 302 redirect on servers, so that is a big issue for webmasters.

He then does a real time example asking an audience member for example URLs for sites with multiple domains.

International Issues - Geolocation
Search Engines give a ranking boost to local sites relevant to the local search. I.e. Google.com.br gives a ranking boost to Brazil sites. Note: Google gives localized results for the USA if the search is on the .com version but also includes a recognized US location (miami pizza). Best method is by using a country code TOp Level Domain (.ca, .co.uk, .com.br). After that Google uses IP geolocation (server host location), Yahoo, MSN, and Ask.com all use link analysis. Problem with geolocation is that many people do not host where the business is located, a Mexican site may be hosted in the US. The issue with link analysis is that when you get links, or higher a broker, you can get links from .ro (russian domains), it will think you are a Russian site.

Each individual page can only be localized to one location. If you have multiple ccTLD domains aliased to a site, this can cause issues based on followed link paths. If you have a gTLD (.com, .net, etc.) then the geolocation will be based on either IP or link analysis. Ian says do both.

(!) Use ccTLD
(2) Hist in target country with target country IP
(3) Get links
(4) missed this

"But our site is more complicated than that..."
Site has an existing .com and wishes to keep that branding and URL Host web site in geolocation and get links. Other solution, you can alias the ccTLD onto the .com, and have at least one link using that ccTLS to the site. An other solution, if we are only talking about 1 ccTLD, you can use a 302 redirect to redirect from teh ccTLD to the .com.

Use ip2location.com/free.asp for a tool.

Christian Van Der Henst from Miacosta Web (spelling?), it is the largest Webmaster community in Latin America (like WebmasterWorld).

Do I need a single domain name for my Latin America (20 domains) or a subdmain.

Subdomain Pros:
- You only need to build one Spanish Web site
- Easier to promote a single domain name
- Avoid having duplicate content
- Promotion for your main domain is easier

Subdomain Cons:
- Spanish language differs from different Latin American countries
- How do you add a new web site for a specific Latin American country.

Country Specific Domains Pros:
- Brand protection
- Users will identify their own country specific web site
- Web sites can include slang and other customizations for each country.

Country Specific Domains Cons:
- Some country specific domains are hard to register
- Your brand can be registered by someone else
- You may need multiple hosting companies
- You're going to handle several web sites (lot of work).

How much do you pay for domain names these days?
- $6 - $15 for an available domain names
In Latin America it can cost $25 to $100 for an available domain. Sometimes you need a postal address in the country. And there is only one provider for country specific domains in Latam.

Some countries promoting their domain extensions.
Examples: .es, Spain, not Latin America, but they are related by language.
.ms Mexico, normally it is $35 per year per domain. But sometimes they have offers, they had an offer in the past for $5 per domain per year.
.ar Argentina, these are free, you just need a postal address in Argentina.

Brand protection offered by marcaria.com and safenames.com.

If you want to go regional, you need to act now. Google got it all for most TLDs. But they did not act as quick for Gmail.TLD, et. Google.com.gt.

Strategy #1:
Get a spanish Web site, get some quotes about domain names for branding protection. Even get a subdomain for now.

Strategy #2
Get a spanish web site and get regional domains and redirect. Protect your brand and promote domains in business cards and other materials.

Strategy #3
Get regional domains and several entry pages, make sure to have entry pages with relevant info of your company in every country Avoid using the same content.

Domains and special characters:
- Country specific domains dont offer domains with accent marks.
- You're promoting somebody else domain
- Not available for all browsers
- They are actually very weird names

Disclaimer: I type as fast as I can, there are grammar errors, typos and more issues with this. I do my best to be as accurate as possible. But due to the nature of "real time" coverage, there will be issues.

Danny is modding up this session, he asked if anyone went to any parties last night. No one raised their hands, I guess they are still sleeping.

James Douglas from Ion Global is first up. What percentage of people on Earth speak English as preferred language? Less than 20%. Spanish? More than English. Most popular language? Chinese. Success is not just about translation. He shows a sony site translated from Japanese to English and how poorly it was done. He then shows Target.com, and they show off their Spanish language site. They did not translate the top navigation and header of the Spanish site. Translation while understandable or accurate is usually unsuited for the Web, where you want to sell. Tone and formality, "Welcome back Joe" versus, "We are honored by your returned visit Mr. SDSSD." Most formal countries to least are; Japan, S. Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, China and so on. He shows off slides of a client of his, Walt Disney World site, not just translation, but XYZ is as big as "local place goes here." It is not just translate, it is "transcreate." He shows how the design can be affected by language issues, more text can make the page look awkward. He then shows a picture of a guy in underwear, with an "OK" mark, but the OK mark is not OK in Brazil (no idea why, someone may tell me). Amazon.com changed "cart" to "basket" for the UK version. Culturally audit your images and enabled your CMS to swap out images. He then shows Arabic, right to left, versus left to right type. So design with international in mind (nav, images, iconography). Make it easy for your users to find international versions of your site. GE does it well, so does Oracle. Or you can use a Global splash page (entry page, like Carnival.com or UPS (comes to mind), IKEA, FisherPrice). You can also do a persistent navigation option, for example Toyota, Intel. It is best to place that global gateway icon at the top right. So make it easy to find your global sites. Consider TEXT instead of GIFs, look at the IKEA web site, all the data is text driven, helps with language and SEO.

Huiping Iler from WinTranslation.com based in Canada. Online, you can online sell with content (including pictures and text). She shows how Babel Fish translation can drive people away, is machine translation viable? Machine translation is best at translating technical content. The Meteo system is a tool that works very well for weather translation. Example, the ford "front" it only means a weather system. But that is one case machine translation works well. But when we write content, the content we write, cannot easily be translated by a machine. What about using someone who speak native in the language? Well, would you ask a friend to pull your teeth or would you go to a Dentist. Ummm... A translator needs to understand the context around the text, the tone of the saying. If you cannot afford to translate all your pages, pick and choose. She said, 80% of the content Microsoft writes does not get read. Translation needs to know SEO, and which terms are used more in that language. She shows how the H&R Block site, english versus Spanish version are completely different in terms of level of SEO. The Spanish version is optimized for "Spanish Site." She shows the SEO + Translation workflow; before developer a glossary of keyword phrases then during apply on-page SEO best practices and then after to QA work.

Marcelo Sant'Iago from the IAB Brazi. Some machine translation like device was playing in the background, too funny - the speaker mimicked it. Translate landing pages into Spanish or Portuguese, you do not need to translate the whole site. Or you can use mini-sties. Adcopy/content strategy: have different budgets and strategies for each country in Latin America. He shows design versus diseno. He also shows Google Trends, country break down and city break down. Strategy: offshoring/outsourcing, you need a local partner.

Jonathan Mendez is last up, this time representing OTTO Digital. Relevancy = Engagement = Conversion = Optimization. It is difficult to deliver relevance to the user. He searches for "latin america" in Google and up came three Google image results, two were maps and a third was latin American girls. The Hispanic population is very diverse and dispersed. This is an opportunity to deliver relevance to the Hispanic market. Audience Segmentation is the first step, you segment by keyword, source, geo location, the language and the stage of the buying cycle. The keyword shows us the goal of the user searching. He shows edmunds.com targeting a "use cars" keyword in Spanish, and it takes you to the new cars landing page and not used cars (plus not in Spanish). The Source helps us show consideration stage, and their motivation. Geo location tell us where they came from and you can create localized messages and seasonality based messages. Language tells us what to serve up to the user, in terms of content. The stage of the buying cycle is also very important; new visitor, return visitor and regular customer. He shows how sites can change the site based on each type of customer. The tools that help include site analytics data, search channel data, customer/sales data and also research data. Within each segment you need to determine which user has the most value. Then they have the "highest value user" and they craft experiences relevant to that user. He explains that there technologies out there that can deliver based on your rules. You don't need to create a new site, just the highest value areas.

Disclaimer: I type as fast as I can, there are grammar errors, typos and more issues with this. I do my best to be as accurate as possible. But due to the nature of "real time" coverage, there will be issues.

Nacho threatened the lives of the SIX panelist, that if they go over, then (well I wont say). He then said something in Spanish, I assume, if you want to listen to the session in Spanish, go get a headset. See, I know Spanish. He said this may have been the hardest panel for him to put together.

Barbara Coll, WebMama is first up. Who is involved in SEM in general? The team, she lists out a bunch of titles. SEMs can't be performed or planned in a vacuum. Integration with other online marketing teams is critical for SEM program success. Education; come to a common terminology, decide what languages and domains will be focused on and used, provide case studies and suggestions as to how and why to integrate (sources for info; sempo, clickz, searchenginewatch (blog), attend conferences). Overlapping budgets; tighten relationship with other agencies, talk about who owns what budget, decide whether corporate or country budgets are to be used. Measurement; offline marketing effects online traffic volume, online marketing effects offline sales, attempt to merge multiple tracking systems and backend CRMs (you have to decide on success metrics). Creatives; Consistency but not the same when it comes to text vs. images, keywords versus page location, ppc versus cpm, searchers versus eyeballs and language issues (translation issues), shared branding experiences and responsibility for trademark disputes. We need to convince the management there is opportunity to target Latin America (how do we do this?)

Dave Williams from 360i. He says look back at 1999, and you will see a lot of similarities there, now in the Hispanic market. Build organization knowledge, you need to educate the people from CEOs to the bottom-levels. , develop 101s and 201s. Develop an integrated search strategy; the SEO investments you make today will have long term rewards and PPC is more like day trading (quick results). Looks at the important keyword buckets (english, spanish), what does your promotional calendar look like? What are your competitors running and how do you differentiate yourself from them? You need to test these creatives. It is important that when you run campaigns, you need to group them properly. Assign each product a bucket and then break down those buckets by high volume and low volume and then based on ROI. Use sophisticated data optimization can help. Statistical modeling, algorithmic optimization, predictive capabilities, understand the value of "assists." This data can be huge for you. Portfolio Approach Optimizes Results: Data indicates that rank has significant impact on clicks and conversions. Through non-bran portfolio optimization can maximize performance. Conversion rates are nearly identical for consumers rating the search process with either a brand or non- brand term provided the last click is brand term. Consumers that click on an ad ten times, are three times as likely to convert than users with one click. Focus on education, strategy, and data.

Eduardo Valades from iHispanic. Latin America; amount of PCs available and the cost to buy them, Internet access is not always available, broadband is expensive, limited content in Spanish and majority of Web sites in Flash (SEO issues). US Hispanics; demographics, psychographics and topologies are unique, us hispanics are forced to blend in, lack of commitment from ad firms and owners, both marketing and content is in English and non-related imagery. You need to commit on long-run, small time and monetary commitments wont do. Challeneges for Web and search engines are growth trends are high, the amount of search queries are few markets, markeitng budgets are small, users homepages may force users to begin with a poor search experience, loyalty with search engines is not high, lack of vision of market opps, SEM firms focusing too much in general marketing and not growing into multuilingual marketing strategies. Balance your online marketing tactics from pull marketing, permission marketing to push marketing. Establish a multilingual strategy, start with english then spanish then Portuguese. ROI Challenges; define goals, gain SEO traffic is lost to poor funnel navigation, PPC may be fractions of the cost (track offline conversions), not accessing web analytics reports. Establishing a road map for results; get educated on the market opp, research and validate research, balance your online marketing tactics, be committed, demonstrate to yourself that this works.

Matt Williams from Prominent Placement. Case study for Abacus Solutions. First dedicated international effort for either organization, no previous experience with developing non-English programs and funding was an issue. Limited program to high-end IBM dedicated servers. What "Translates?" Can a successful US focused, English language program be "translated" to SPanish and Portuguese? Not fully. Results for "IBM AS/400 servidores usados," they got great rankings right away. Spanish language visitors increased +1400%, Portuguese language visitors increase +700%, no degradation among other languages, the pie grew. Opportunity assessment; your ability to be seen in the search engines depends on your competition, or lack there of. Knowledge of the search landscape is critical. Intent, build awareness via search engine visibility, drive traffic that converts. Site page optimization, content creation, keyword selection , relevant, unique compelling, on and off page factors worked similar to US SEO. Linking, authority site, anchor text, branding opps, and additional research via RSS feeds, PR Web, additional SERPs through press releases. Things that are different; level of sophistication; competitors, tools very little. Project management, additional complexity and additional costs (time/money). Additional credibility required, international shipping, currency conversion, etc. Seasonality and world events; business cycles, elections, sporting, events, festivals, holidays, etc. PPC differences, Language issues, brand terms, acronyms, etc. misspellings and "spanglish." Tips: search is search focus on relevancy and content; latin american SEM requires time, money and doing it right and the opportunity it large, less competitive and huge potential with huge bottom-line effect.

Matias Perel from LatinThre3. Latino Challenges; language and cultural diversity, trademark terms, target locally, tracking conversions, how to track my offline sales and search engine of 3rd party tracking. He said the Brazilian market is more developed then the Mexico market. He will be focusing on trademark terms in this presentation. There is no policy in Latin America on trademarks, he puts up a slide on the definition of a trademark. In Latin America there is no law on this yet. He shows the purchase funnel: hotel in miami -> miami hotel reviews -> cheap hotel miami -> intercontinental hotel miami. The last keyword is a trademark, and there is a risk in targeting those keywords. He discusses the Google lawsuit and GEICO. He puts up a slide on Yahoo and Google, Yahoo allows you to use a trademark if you are a reseller or you are an information site (not competitive) and Google allows you to bid on trademarks unless the trademark has been filed with Google and approved by Google not to be used in AdWords.

Massimo Burgio representing SEMPO to present a SEMPO paper. He tells folks what SEMPO is, check them out at SEMPO.org. A SEMPO collaborative project to map the experience of being a SEM to target Latino. Results will be published on the SEMPO web site. 33 SEMPO members out of 417 replied. Do you Latino? 26% US Hispanic only, 20% US Hispanic and Latin America, 18% Latin America SEMs targeting US Hispanics and Latin America, 15% worldwide targeting both and 13% Latin America SEMs targeting only Latin America, and 8% Spanish SEMs targeting. What were your biggest challenges and hod did you overcome it? Content localization was one of the biggest list. The solution was to deploy different web sites with different products and different goals. "Flat targeting" is not the exception here, but the mainstream rule. Other problems include cultural and language diversities... To solve this issue, you create landing pages,or testing a mix-mode content page, they also hired Latinos in your field. Also there is a lack of reliable data on user behavior (browsing versus searching), the solution is to research. More problems is e-commerce issues, have patience with this or come up with alternatives. An other issue is client education, solution is to create case histories or free testing. What is your Latino search mix? SEO+PPC, design multiple landing pages for Latinos. Which general issues do you think should be addressed? tools, vendors, ad networks, and US clients need to be convinced. Then they ask for folks to tell them a fun story about their experience; Hispanics are being targeted in Spanish but searching in English and also a funny language issue story. Would you be interested in joining Latino SEMPO? Most said yes, so there is a SEMPO Latino starting.

Disclaimer: I type as fast as I can, there are grammar errors, typos and more issues with this. I do my best to be as accurate as possible. But due to the nature of "real time" coverage, there will be issues.

Danny Sullivan preps the panel, big panel, big panel.

Gonzalo Alonso from Google Mexico up first. Trends in Latin America is that it is not that different from what we saw in the US. Search is pervasive in Latin America (same slide from the session right before this). Internet users search to learn more about product and services (70% brazil, 74% mexico), compare prices (66% brazil, 61% mexico), more stats but too quick to write down. Search marketing in Latin America is poisded to grow, $111M in 2005 and $337 in 2009, expected to triple in size in four years. Google is the number one property by page views, number two property by reach, number one property in search and number one property in online communities with orkut. 78% of search pageviews take place in Google, 84% in argentina, 88% chile, etc. He goes over basic AdWords information, where the ads show, how the ads are shown and some AdSense. Google reaches 80% of the Internet population worldwide. He shows a video of how AdWords is helping in Latin America, docid=2258046021913351677 title is Corpo Perfecito (Grupo Galgrin) e Google AdWords em Brasil (2 minute and 16 second video, posted on Feb. 22, 2006). You can see on the face of Gonzalo that the video means a lot to him, he cares.

Guilherne Gibenboim from Yahoo!, wow Danny pronounced it, he has a thick accent, I think he is from Brazil. Latam Market, there are many types of businesses on YSM but they generally fall into 4 basic types in Latam. (1) Internet pure players (2) SEMs (3) Agencies and (4) Small & Medium Businesses. Advertisers main challenge, to pinpoint relevant searchers in Latam. How are users searching? Over 500M keywords generated in YSM Latin America per year. Most successful advertisers own between 1k-50k keywords in Brazil. The buying cycle: The user can search to be informed, to shop or to purchase. Planning your customer experience: segmentation is the key to planning your customer experience. Tracking conversions: It is important to consider the factors that drive conversions. YSM's goal is to help advertisers to pinpoint relevant searchers.

Maria Teresa Arnal from Prodigy MSN. Leading online destination in Mexico with over 17M users per month. #3 player in market with 40% reach, 8M users and 100M search queries per month. It's only the beginning: VIsion of Search" deliver answers not just links, answer complex questions, understand and anticipate user intent, broaden search beyond the web and provide a seamless experience no matter where data resides, and put the user in control and deliver a personalized search experience. They are investing heavily in relevance, leadership, local and enterprise. They want to go beyond web search. MSN Search V1, start.com, livelabs, academic search, etc. Prodigy MSN User Behavior; single words are the main way users search for results, 64% of the queries are text link results while 36% are image results, users peak time to search is between 10am and 4pm and queries drop 50% on weekends. Prodigy MSN Portal 28%, Search Portal 39%, Hotmail 1%, Messenger 7%, and other (IE, Encarta, etc.) 24%. What can advertisers do with Prodigy MSN in Mexico? She shows sponsored search (advertising.prodigy.msn.com), Prodigy MSN will offer a unique opp for advertisers targeting Mexican internet users; they are partnering with players in Mexico, etc. She talks about adCenter, serving 100% of paid search listings in France, Singapore, US and UK (autumn 2006). Advertisers more strategically plan their online buys. Real audience intelligence and targeting capabilities. Available for SPanish speaking markets in 2007. She shows search funnels, search result clustering, and forecasting search volume functionality (we discussed them here in the past).

Erica Schmidt (not Eric Schmidt, EricA) from iProspect. Latin America GDP 2003 shows Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Peru are the largest, in that area. Erica will focus on the top five. She took a snapshot view of Internet usage online worldwide by country; US, then China, then Japan, Brazil is number 11 (March 2006, ComScore). Broadband subscriber growth in Latin America to grow 70.7% according to eMarketer, May 2006. Search Marketplace: Google leads in search queries worldwide with 39.5%, Yahoo 18.3%, 8.6% Google UK. Brazil Google has 55.8%, MSN has 30.2% and Yahoo! 11.9% (May 2006). Mexico; Google 74.9%, 17.2% Yahoo, Prodigy MSN 1.6% share. Argentina, Google 80.7%, and Colombia 87% and Chile is 93% Google market share (huge). Key Languages: Spanish, French, Portuguese (Brazil). Radio Button Usage (you know clicking on Google.com versus Google.co.mx, etc. or search pages only in Spanish or search on pages in Mexico). Most users do not click on those radio buttons! Search engines "pre-empt" search results with content from within these tabs. Users don't utilize the "radio buttons." She explains the geo-filters placed automatically when searching in US versus anywhere else. Mega trends among all the engines; local, blogs, personalization, offline convergence, mobile and no more spam.

Marcel Sant'Iago from the IAB Brazil. He will give us stats from numbers generated within Brazil. More than 10M internet users, 12M from home, with a population of 180M. 78% of users belong to AB class. 40% of active users use broadband, 95% of IRS tax forms are submitted online, 500,000+ .com.br domains. Online ad revenue in 2005 is $111M US. 15-20% of online media investments, local search is not available, local publishing providing contextual inventory, big marketers coming in, retail still lead paid placement. Opportunities: CPCs are still low compared to US and Europe, most categories have few ads, broad reach of search engines. Internet activities; email 17%, school activities 11.5%, search for products (too quick), he broke down search specific search also. The Challenge; language, they have three names for Tangerine in Portuguese.

Disclaimer: I type as fast as I can, there are grammar errors, typos and more issues with this. I do my best to be as accurate as possible. But due to the nature of "real time" coverage, there will be issues.

Danny Sullivan explains the timer to the panel which includes Nacho, Sarah Carberry and Jessie Stricchiloa.

Nacho Hernandez from iHispanic to give his presentation. He should be providing a detailed landscape overview. US Hispanic population growth; 44 million in 2004, 68 million was estimated in 2015, a huge growth. US Hispanics are spreading fast across the US landscape. 71% of all US Hispanic households are concentrated in 20 markets. US Hispanic household is 42% larger; 3.4 versus 2.4 in the general market (more people in a household). The US Hispanic market is young, 46% of hispanics are 24 years of age or younger versus 33% of non-hispanics. 40% internet penetration rate of US Hispanics, spain 39%, france 38%, Mexico (missed). Hispanics online are qualified consumers, with $30,000 or more household income. Hispanics are heavy internet users, US Hispanics view 150 pages on average, compared to 133 of general market - that is 13% higher. US Hispanics spend 87 more minutes online, 10% more. Time spent per week, TV 17.5 hours, Radio 11.2 hours, Internet 9.7 hours and print 5.4 hours. Consumed media is shifting; 62% of hispanics said they would be spending more time on the Internet as opposed to the other medias. Do you feel that you can find most relevant info on? Internet was like 95% the vote. He then ran some comparison tests between the search engines. 67% of Hispanics are not that loyal to a search engine, which surprised Nacho, since Hispanics are typically local to brands. 61% of US Hispanics are aware there is a difference between paid and organic results. They then asked the users if they can tell the difference between paid and organic. 56% of US Hispanics are not sure about the difference (lots of opportunity there). US Hispanic ad spend totaled more than 3.3 billion to market products to the US Hispanics in 2005, and a 6.8 percent increase from 2004. "$14 billion will be spent on paid search in 2006." They used this forecast model and tried to match it to the US Hispanic numbers, $884 million will be spent on paid search directly or indirectly to US Hispanics in 2006. $30M will be spend on spanish paid search. US Hispanics are primarily searching in English, because that is the content out there. Latin America is different. Measure the performance of an English ad versus an Spanish ad, compare. There is opportunity to increase Web sites in Spanish, better web content, better services and more paid ads. Advanced SEM Strategies for US Hispanic SEM: He gives some localized data for San Diego, Tijuana. And does a localized ad for them in Google AdWords. He compares the Spanish CPC versus the English CPC is much lower, higher ROI. He brings up the SEOMoz Keyword difficulty tool, and shows that "futbol" is a competitive keyword, and "Futbol" was $0.01 in Overtures bid tool! He goes over some quick tips quickly, people search backwards in Spanish (???). Identify your SPanish keywords for SPanish users only. He showed how to gain real estate on SERPs, not only did MexGrocer have top rankings, their affiliates were right under them. US Hispanic market is hot, paid search is taking off, trend for spanish content is rising, and SEM strategies for Hispanics require some basic dedication.

Sarah Carberry from Google is now up to share an online survey. The objective of the study was to learn more, to give advertisers an unbiased, 3rd party (Media Study helped) to help them make informed marketing decisions, to ensure that Google is meeting the needs for marketers targeting US Hispanics online. Findings suggest that current online US Hispanic market is comprised of educated, affluent and tech savvy early adopters. US Hispanics are more likely to purchase travel, technology, entertainment, beauty/cosmetics and or business service more so then US. US Hispanics are searching more than any other activity next to email. US Hispanics use a range of search engines. US Hispanics are more likely to use search engines to help with a variety of online shopping activities like compare prices, learn more about products, purchase it online. US Hispanics are purchasing online and offline, after using a search engine, US Hispanics internet users estimate they purchase 38% products. Users who consider Spanish their primary language are more likely to search in English. Text Ad Language: More us hispanics are clicking on English ads. US Hispanics use a search engine to pursue interests like finding recipes, read news, download music and blog posting more so then general population. They are also going online to access the net via multiple devices like mobile phones. She explains that US Hispanics are all different, they each have a unique personality and search differently.

Jessie Sticchiola Alchemist Media is last up. She praises Nacho, well deserved! She shows that many major US cities are dominated by Hispanics. If you are not a big dog in SEM you need to rely on word of mouth marketing, you are also suffering from lacking in top 10 rankings for SEM terms and you can a limited cash flow and budgets to spend on paid ads. You need to build successful client relationships, the loyalty business model. SEM-CRM is a world onto itself. Expectation management within an ever fluctuating SEM industry, cost variation due to lack of commoditization of SEM related services and client issues (dealing with tech team, external agencies). Client selection and sales process; you have to consider the clients understanding of the SEM industry, prior SEM engagements, development resources, commitment and availability and financial stability and accounting process. If they had 1 prior engagement, likely a wise business move, 2 priors is not unheard of, 3 priors then that raises a red flag (dig for background), 4 priors is a huge red flag). Client development resources; internal production and 3rd party agencies. Client commitment and availability, constant supervision of site production process to ensure CPC/SEO compatibility. Client accounting process; inquire about client's accounting process (net 30, net 60) and determine whether you will have a direct accounting contact for payment and if you are ok with the arrangement. Communication & Expectations; what you will, wont and might do with regard to the web site during the course of the project, the risks involved with your SEO tactics, influential factors out of your control, what you expectations are of their team throughout the project, consider incorporating these elements into agreements. Intuitive selection factors; internal unity with regard to SEM efforts, communication skills, EGO factors and cultural fit.

Disclaimer: I type as fast as I can, there are grammar errors, typos and more issues with this. I do my best to be as accurate as possible. But due to the nature of "real time" coverage, there will be issues.

Pictures of SES Latino uploaded in almost real time also here.

Disclaimer: I type as fast as I can, there are grammar errors, typos and more issues with this. I do my best to be as accurate as possible. But due to the nature of "real time" coverage, there will be issues.

Nacho is up on the stage ready to kick this event off, I snapped a picture, Ill post it live later. There seems to be under 150 people in this room. Honestly, I am a bit excited as we start off this event. Huge congrats to Nacho for putting this all together. We are a bit late to start, maybe that is by design. I have no reception for my pda in this room, plus no wifi, kinda of painful for me - but I will run up to the room or find the speaker room asap. FYI - a Yahoo PR girl is next to me, Heather, met her before, I'll publicly say hi to her here. Yes, we did talk but it is nice to reach out via blog.

Gaston Taratuta from IMS Inc, there are a large portal in Latin America and a large newspaper. Key Elements, the economic landscape, 80% of the DFP of the US go through Latin America. He tells us not to underestimate the power of the smaller locals in Latin America such as Colombia, Peru, Chile, etc because they have large penetration for internet usage. In 1996 - 2000, Yahoo displayed banners that were CPM based and keyword base not auctions. CADE has the same yahoo model. UOL used a keyword base client buys the first result for a period of time, not auction, then they moved to CPM base. Yahoo was the leader in Brazil. In 2000 - 2002, Yahoo bought Cade, UOL bought miner and then Google came into the market. Between 2000 and 2005 Google became a big brand in Latin America on both the user and publisher front. Terespondo.com was founded by two young guys, Juan Calle and Daniel Echeverria. Terespondo.com 100% based on CPC keyword auction, like GoTo back in the day. Terespondo business model was to secure as fast as possible distribution deals with major players in Latin America. The deal was the first five responses will be commercialized by Terespondo through an auctioning system. Publishers receives either a revenue share or a CPM guaranteed for searches generated. He shows the campaign by Terespondo running on UOL. They worried about showing too many sponsored results and not enough visible organic results (remember Ask Jeeves). By 2002 Terespondo secured deals with MSN, Terra, UOL, iG, Estadao,etc. By 2004 Terespondo was covering most of the major sites in Brazil, they owned the market between 2002, and 2004. In Mexico, they did well, not as well as Brazil. He shows Argentina, a fight between terespondo and Google. The "games begins" in 2002, Google and Overture had conversations with those in Brazil to use their sponsored search. Overture's approach was that they were not destination sites, they don't care who you display in terms of organic results. Google said, we are a destination site looking to provide the best results, Google required both organic and sponsored to be in the same deal - no picking and matching. Terespondo.com decided to talk to Google and Overture, since it is hard to compete. Overture in October 2004, launched in Brazil. Overture bought Terespondo in April 2005. Google launched in Brazil in June 2005. Google bought AKWAN in 3Q 2005. Brazil has 650M searches per month (US 4.5B searches), Mexico 250M, Argentina, 150M. Brazil 8M ad dollars, 3M in Mexico and 1.5M in Argentina.

Eduardo Valades from iHispanic Marketing Group. 44M US Hispanics who spend 575billion dollars. 15.7 million online US hispanics. Spend $5.6 billion in 2003 online. 20 countries in Latin America, spanish, Portuguese, spanish. Is search a commodity? Search is the number two reason people go to the Internet, behind email. They also asked which search engine is the most relevant? Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc (published this data at SEW blog in March 06). Search experience? Google, Yahoo, MSN, in that order. Favorite places to go online, in Latin America, the internet cafe is the most popular place (hence Nacho's proposal to Google). What are Hispanics Searching? for web sites and information, then products then images then news, then music then maps, local info, movies, video and other. Language preferences between US Hispanics and Latin America (you can imagine the difference). They believe that there is a lack of spanish language content out there. Some more data, all posted in that SEW post, ill try to link to it NOW. Bottom-line, lots of opportunity in the Hispanic market both in Latin America and in the US. Also, mobile devices are huge and mobile search opportunity is there. 25% of US hispanics have used mobile search and 20% of Latin Americans have used mobile search.

Gonzalo Alonso the General Director of Google Mexico. Search is pervasive in Latin American, usage of a search engine when researching or purchasing a product online; 93% Brazil and 99% Mexico. Search is well developed in Latin America. Brazil, Google gets bumped down by Orkut on the chart. Mexico, Colombia and Chile are doing well on the cart. They want to see Argentina move more. As in US, users search on most days they connect (some graph shows it). Search pageviews per usage day higher than US. More people search deeper, more pages viewed, in Latin America then in the US (lack of content or quality search?). 78% of search pageviews take place in Google in Latin America. What users are searching in Google. May 2006, Brazil popular queries, "rebelde," "enem," etc. Mexico, "ronaldinho," "amor en custodia," etc. Google has 20 domains for Google in Latin America, in three languages (spanish, portuguese and Quechua). Some Google products localized for Latin America; Search, Orkut, Blogger, Gmail, Toolbar, Desktop, Earth, Picada and Google Scholar plus AdWords AdSense, etc. AdSense network is on terra, Ubbi, and Cronica. They have resellers like Clarin and Planet and also comarketers such as locaweb and bighost.

Peter Celeste from Yahoo! Search Marketing, General Manager, overseas Latin America and Canada, he was with the company since 2000, with GoTo.com. YSM connects advertisers to the Internet's most valuable audience with the industry;s most comprehensive sit of highly effective products, offering the greatest level of control. Yahoo's footprint in global. Q4 2000 in the UK, then Q1 2002 in Germany, then Q4 20002 in Japan, then Q4 2004 went into Latin America. This year, they will launch in Argentina, the "panama platform" will allow them to expand more, with geotargeting and linguistic technologies in 2007. In 2005 there were 850M internet users worldwide, 22% latin america and in 2010 there will be 1.6B internet users, 21% from Latin America - most the growth is from outside of the US. There is a 20% increase in Internet users in the past 10 years, most growth from outside of the US, i.e. globally. Since launching the TR platform in Sept 05, Mexico advertiser base has grown over 50% Q over Q. Advertisers on YSM Brazil reach over 95% of users searching online. Yahoo! has over 70 partners in Latin America (UOL, MSN, etc.). Yahoo! Telemundo reaches more than 75% of the online audience - 12.5M us hispanics each month. Online ad spending targeted at Hispanics is projected to increase 32% this year to $132 million, compared with a 25% increase to $15.6B for the overall us internet ad market. The population of 16M hispanic users of the Internet in the US is projected to expand roughly 30% over the next five years.

Just a quick post to point out the interesting thread at Search Engine watch Forums from Nacho Hernandez. He introduces an economic concept for Google, suggesting that they provide computers and access for free in cafe's. He describes that the

primary objective is really to get a working model for growth in Internet access in Latin America

The idea sounds very cool to me, and I hope he has success in pitching it to Google. At the very least, someone is going to take this idea and run with it, in my opinion. Take a look at the introduction at Search Engine Watch Forums or the full Google Cafe Proposal at iHispanic (PDF).

After the keynote, which Barry also covered, I got the opportunity to get introduced with Barry Diller and spend a couple minutes with him. So I asked, "what is your vision in all of this for Ask with regards to Latin America and Spanish searchers in general?". He responed, "Latin America is a very important market for Ask going forward (along with other markets too). I think we're not doing enough and all of that will be changing."

That sounds to me like a COMMITMENT to GROWTH. Perhaps Barry understands that Latin America represents an opportunity to gain market share over its competitors? Smart guy! Then again, what if Ask's competitors are way ahead already and it will difficult to catch up as it has been in the U.S. market. Only time will tell, it's still to early to know. In my opinion, they have all just gotten started within the last 12 months.

Opportunities come and go, very few get a good chance to really profit BIG on them. Outstanding keynote! I see great things going on at Ask.

Yesterday the IAB Mexico Search Marketing Committee had its first official monthly meeting to review the status of the search market in Mexico as a group. The members discussed the importance of it objectives, which are not too distant from the US chapter as their "goal is to educate advertisers on the marketing benefits and value of search engine media. Additionally, the committee is tasked with developing industry standards for the technology of search using XML. The committee will deliver these objectives through research, standards development and stakeholder education."

We are all very excited to see this market grow!

Google has now re-branded Urchin to Google Analytics presenting users with better ways to “understand and influence visitor behavior and generate a higher ROI on marketing initiatives”. Yes folks! It’s offering a free hosted web analytics service, in hopes that advertisers, publishers and website owners will spend time understanding how people find their websites, navigate through them and convert on the goals of the site. With the free service, Google hopes it helps people spend money on their search marketing campaigns rather than on measurement. This is going to have a huge impact on both the search marketing and the web analytics industries. Draw your own conclusions.

But how much is really free? Google Analytics will allow you to track up to 5 million pageviews per month, no questions asked, no fees charged. So you have a BIG MONSTER website, then all they request is that you have at least one active Adwords account with an active campaign and spend $1 if you want, that’s all it takes. No more pageview caps. I’m sure they hope you spend much more than that when you see all the tracking benefits.

What’s more in this move, Google Analytics now allows integration with AdWords to better monitor “ROI metrics automatically without having to import cost data or tag keywords”, as well as tracking all of your other internet marketing initiatives as well. When you subscribe to it, you will see it as a new tab under your AdWords account. It now has executive, marketer, and webmaster dashboards for view quick summaries of “traffic, e-commerce, and conversion trends without hunting through reports.” Here is what else it offers:

• Reporting interface accessible directly from the google.com/analytics website if you don’t have an Adwords account


• Advanced visitor segmentation with over 80 web analytics reports


• Ability to track up to 50 websites within your account


• Site overlay


• Funnel visualization


• GeoTargeting with a cool map that shows where your traffic comes from
  
• It’s available in 16 languages: Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and English.


• And much more…

For those worried on privacy concerns, this is what they say, “Google takes the trust people place in us very seriously, and we are committed to safeguarding the privacy of your data. We understand that web analytics data is sensitive, so we accord it the ironclad protection it deserves. Google Analytics is subject to the same industry leading privacy policy as all Google services: http://www.google.com/privacypolicy.html”

On a personal note, I’m also very excited with the steps Google is making because my consulting firm, iHispanic Marketing Group, is proud to announce that Google Analytics has chosen us as one among other Client Service and Support Consultants to service the global Hispanic market. With this strategic alliance we are committed to delivering professional services for training, advanced support, and expert web analytics consulting to executives, marketing managers and webmasters in both Spanish and English. Our loyalty we’ve had to Urchin and to our clients have demonstrated great rewards. Google Analytics will be a fun ride moving forward to continue building leadership with the Hispanic market for search engine marketing and internet strategy.

For discussion on this topic, you’re welcome to share your thoughts in the SearchEngineWatch Forum’s thread: Urchin Now Google Analytics, Now Free.

I was very pleased to see my good friend and colleague Lucas Morea make the Top 20 finalists for BusinessWeek Online Young Entrepreneurs search.

Many of you may know Lucas from being a SES Conference Speaker for the past 2 years now (wow, time flies). Lucas, Barbara Coll and myself do the Search Engine Marketing to U.S. Hispanics and Latin America session.

I've gotta tell you guys, when it comes to getting SEO traffic, Lucas has done a brilliant job. One of his biggest websites gets somewhere around 8 or 10 million visitors per month... not bad, ehh! And people think there is low volume in Latin America.... Ha! Think again! The story behind his first website, Monografias.com, tought me a great lesson on how to get free content on my sites and making the user be the expert copywriter.

Anyway, BusinessWeek Online is asking you to browse through, cast your vote, and see the results when they report them. I would appreciate to see many you vote in favor of this search engine marketer to help our industry stand out.

Please vote for Lucas Morea! Thanks :-)

Last month we met the Yahoo! Publisher Network team at the SEW Forums Live conference (thanks for the reception party guys!). There we had a nice talk about adding some of our Spanish websites, more specifically one that has about 50 million pageviews per month. So we thought YPN would love this, right? Well, yes... they would love to, that is, but they can't. We just got word from them and they said, "... we are not able to serve Spanish contextual ads at this time... I don’t have an ETA on supporting Spanish yet." My guess is that it's probably the same case with other languages, but I can't confirm that.

So there you have it amigos, no contextual ads in Spanish from YPN at this time. Too bad, Google Adsense is paying a lot of money!

Congratulations TeRespondo for relaunching their new website and keeping their brand: http://www.terespondo.com/

Back in September I blogged about how Yahoo! Mexico was preparing for its reinauguration ceremony. I was invited to the party, but unfortunately I couldn't make it.

What's even more news it their launching of a CPC model for markets such as Mexico and many more. Before, they used to be offering Search products on a CPM model. Now all of that has changed. Their new sign up page takes you through 4 steps: 1) Contact Information. 2) List a few keywords and get some suggested keywords. 3)Build out your PPC ads. 4) Pick your BIDS (in Mexico, it's determined in MXP$, min bid at MXP$0.50). and 4) Login to your new account and add funds. They only accept VISA or Master Card. You can also do an electronic bank tansfer/deposit. They charge 15% tax for those who are local and it's waived for foreigners.

It was pretty easy to set up... although you do need to know spanish ;-)

More about the TeRespondo moves in the Search Marketing in Latin America achives.

In previous blog I had reported about Overture Mexico being launched between August and September, but nothing has happened yet. Most likely it wil be delayed to early October is my hunch.

Last week while I was in Mexico CIty I was able to meet lots of great people that are doing a big effort in growing the search marketing industry. Amongst them, I came across the rummor that the company is scheduled to throw a reinaugural ceremony (party) for it's efforts to present the new Paid Search model in the Yahoo! Mexico office now headed by Rafael Jimenez who reports to Peter Celeste, Latin America Manager.

So, which brand will be used for this effort?

Will TeRespondo remain to have a very strong brand in Latin America and they might be keeping that name? I'd be very happy for Juan Diego Calle and Danny Echavarria to see their brand prevail. Nothing official yet, so we'll soon find out.

In August 22, 2005 at 5:48 PM, CNN en Español during Finance and Economy block made a LIVE interview with Gaston Taratuta in a conversation about Search in Latin America.

I met Gaston back in SES New York in 2004. He is the president and founder of Internet Marketing Services Inc. ("IMS"), a leading media firm with exclusive rights to represent UOL and Folha Sao Paulo, Brazil’s largest ISP and newspaper respectively. Gaston is an industry veteran and a leading authority in online marketing in Latin America. Some of IMS’ clients include Dell, Microsoft, Sony, and Visa – just to name a few. He is a very dedicated and talented person, but most of all, he is experiencing how Search is growing in Latin America.

In his interview, CNN en Español anchor Alberto Padilla asks Gaston to talk about the differences between Google and Yahoo! as well as their product and service offerings. Gaston talks about the importance of Search in the U.S. in comparison with other online advertising alternatives. Gaston gives numbers about the growth in Latin America for online advertising which was about 25% higher in 2004 and most likely will see an additional 20 and 30% growth for 2005. However, he mentions it's still only 1.5% of all advertising spend, so there is even more potential opportunities for companies to take advantage of this type of advertising by adding search marketing and other online exposure into their total mix.

When he moved on to talk about Search, he was more specific about Brazil, since it's his core focus. He said that there are about 600 million queries per month, which is a great opportunity for the small and medium businesses so that not only the big mayor brands can have access to this type of online advertising. He mentions that there are 7,500 companies already spending money on Search in Brazil, 2,000 companies in Mexico and 1,000 companies in Argentina.

Yesterday, I had a very good phone conversation with Gaston to talk more on this subject. We both agree on the investment opportunity for global companies to be doing search in Latin America. As well as the importance of the mayor search engines (Yahoo!, Google and MSN) to having local presence to educate businesses on search and the impressive returns on investment along with the effectiveness of tracking all information down to the smallest detail.

What a few of my closest collegues and I see, is a great opportunity for search engine marketing firms and professionals that know search engine optimization to take on this NEW roller coaster ride and make tons of money helping these businesses grow. This is the primary reason why SES Latino 2006 is taking place and everyone interested in the topic of making money on search marketing to new markets should definetly attend.

Barry covered the blog on "Google Gets Really Personal with Personal Search". However, one thing I noticed on Danny's excellent write up was a mention of Dirson's screenshot (see blog entry), which Barbara Coll points out that Google has a tab for en Español as part of personal search.

After yesterday's news on the potential Univision deal, it's clear to me now that Google is taking action on gaining ground for the worldwide Hispanic market. I've mentioned before this is over 61 million users.

Danny Sullivan just announced the new agenda for Search Engine Strategies (SES) in San Jose 2005. This is the big one for most tech savvy webmasters and marketers. Plus the parties are phenomenal! The show will be held August 8-11, 2005 at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center. I highly recommend to register early, this show books up all hotel rooms in the area.

As part of my Hispanic SEM blogging coverage, I would like to inform you that there will be a session focused just for Spanish language SEM tactics. As described, "This session looks at how to target Spanish speakers within the US and the world through paid and organic search marketing efforts." Speakers give their presentations in English. This session was previously called "Search Marketing To Hispanics & Latin America" (also given in English). The objective is for search engine marketers in various segments reach these growing markets. For example:

• US Hispanic companies targeting US Hispanics (example: Univison.com)


• US American companies targeting US Hispanics (example: espanol.officedepot.com)


• Both US Hispanic and American companies targeting Latin America as well as their own markets (examples: CNNenEspanol.com, Marriott Hotels, United Airlines, etc.)


• Latin American companies targeting their own markets (example: esmas.com, TeRespondo.com, UOL.com, etc)


• Latin American companies targeting all markets that include both Latin American, US Hispanic and American markets (for example: the singer Luis Miguel or the most exported beer in the world, Corona)

The opportunities are almost unlimited and it's pretty much all virgin territory with little or no competition. If you see the Internet as a way for globalization to happen with your websites, then mark down this session on your SES agenda.

Brazilian search engine marketer, Alexandre Kavinski, just informed me that next week there will be a one day marketing conferenece held by The International Advertising Association (IAA) Florida Chapter which will include a session about Search Engine Marketing in Latin America with Yahoo! Search Marketing and other native Latin American speakers. Here are more details about the conference:

THURSDAY, JUNE 23, 2005
The Biltmore Hotel, Coral Gables, Fl

11:00 - 12:30 NOON: SEARCH MARKETING - a US $4.5 Billion Dollar Industry in the US, what is the status of Search Engine marketing in Latin America.

SPEAKERS:

• Alexandre Kavinski, CEO, Hotlist Latin America


• Peter Celeste, General Manager Latin America, Overture


• Romero Rodrigues, CEO & Founder, Buscape Latin America

Members $45.00 | Non-Members - $95.00 |$115.00 at the door

Unfortunately there is no live link on the web, but if you're interested in going just shoot me an email and I can give you the contact's details to sign up.