Connected TV (CTV) is on the rise in Latin America as content viewing habits go digital

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The trend: More than four in five (84%) Latin Americans prefer connected TV (CTV) to traditional TV, according to a recent report by mobile programmatic platform Mediasmart and Logan, a mobile technology and big data company for agencies and enterprises.

This preference is fueled by the explosive increase in CTV penetration in recent years as well as the expanding availability of services—whether through subscription or freemium types of ad-supported video-on-demand (AVOD) offerings.

  • 59% of consumers in Latin America claim they mostly use ad-supported services like ViX TV, Pluto TV, and others.

  • CTV ads capture more attention on average than traditional TV, particularly in Mexico. A quarter of respondents paid more attention to advertising on CTV when buying a product, compared with 15% who did so on traditional TV. The same held true in Argentina and Brazil.

  • Nearly nine in 10 (87%) of Brazilians prefer CTV over traditional linear TV, with a 36% attention uplift. Overwhelmingly, they prefer AVOD platforms, as subscription streamers focus on value.

Analyst insight: “As expected, CTV usage correlated with higher income in countries like Brazil, but the availability of cheaper CTVs and internet plans has also fueled growth among its middle and lower economic classes,” said Matteo Ceurvels, eMarketer senior analyst for Latin America and Spain at Insider Intelligence. “While CTV data is more limited for other countries, it stands to reason that similar trends would be found elsewhere in Latin America.”

Why it matters: We expect that by 2023, TV ad spend will recover to pre-pandemic levels Brazil and Colombia; it will already have recovered in the four other Latin American markets we forecast. Despite that recovery, advertisers will continue to shift spending to digital formats, with CTV a particular growth area. In Brazil, we expect 22.7% growth in subscription OTT viewers between 2022 and 2026, the end of our forecast period.