Sir Martin´s WPP acquired online full service agency Midia Digital and search agency i-Cherry, both based out of Curitiba, south of Brazil.

i-Cherry top executive is brazilian search pioneer Alexandre Kavinski.

Here´s the official press release.

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Social Networks are very popular in Brazil and Facebook decided to take advantage of that.

Looking to expand its user base and searching for brand awareness opportunities, Facebook is hiring a Growth Manager.

The opening is posted on FB´s website and [...]]]> Social Networks are very popular in Brazil and Facebook decided to take advantage of that.

Looking to expand its user base and searching for brand awareness opportunities, Facebook is hiring a Growth Manager.

The opening is posted on FB´s website and it is a 6-12 months engagement, so we cannot say if they will have a full staff soon. But it is a start.

They are also hiring in Russia and India, thus BRIC is a priority now.

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South African media company Naspers announced today the acquisition of 91% of the share capital of Brazilian e-commerce group BuscaPé.com Inc. for an amount of US$342m.

Buscapé, which started as comparison shopping ten years ago, currently is Latin America’s top such [...]]]> South African media company Naspers announced today the acquisition of 91% of the share capital of Brazilian e-commerce group BuscaPé.com Inc. for an amount of US$342m.

Buscapé, which started as comparison shopping ten years ago, currently is Latin America’s top such network for new and used goods and one of the region’s best-known internet brands. It is the exclusive provider of comparison shopping solutions to more than 100 portals and websites in Latin America, including Microsoft, Globo and Abril, with over 10 million products and over 320 000 online and offline stores.

In recent years BuscaPé acquired a competitor, Bondfaro. It also expanded with QueBarato, the leading free-classifieds network in Latin America. Electronic payments can be done with Pagamento Digital. In addition it has an affiliate advertising network named Lomadee, an e-commerce research business, eBit, and a fraud risk assessment service, FControl.

All details on Naspers’ press realease.

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According to the latest comScore report “in Brazil, Google Sites accounts for 89.5 percent of all searches conducted, while Google Orkut has a dominant position in social networking (96.0 percent of time spent), as does Google Maps in the maps [...]]]> According to the latest comScore report “in Brazil, Google Sites accounts for 89.5 percent of all searches conducted, while Google Orkut has a dominant position in social networking (96.0 percent of time spent), as does Google Maps in the maps category (70.9 percent of time spent) and Google-owned YouTube in the multimedia category (91.6 percent)”.

You can check the full worldwide data reading comScore’s press release.

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As part of its efforts to revamp the international operations, internal sources from MySpace Brazil already confirmed that the office will remain open only until June 30th. MySpace opened its local office 2 years ago.

Still remains a mistery what [...]]]> As part of its efforts to revamp the international operations, internal sources from MySpace Brazil already confirmed that the office will remain open only until June 30th. MySpace opened its local office 2 years ago.

Still remains a mistery what will happen with the current campaigns and partnerships ( last week mySpace announced a big deal with a leading content portal in Brazil).

No official communication from MySpace Brazil yet.

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SMX will arrive in Brazil for its second show on August 4th.

Key notes were announced last week: Danny Sullivan, Erica Schmidt (Isobar) and SEMPO’s President Sara Houlobek are some of the international speakers.

Unlike 2008, this year’s SMX SP (possible [...]]]> SMX will arrive in Brazil for its second show on August 4th.

Key notes were announced last week: Danny Sullivan, Erica Schmidt (Isobar) and SEMPO’s President Sara Houlobek are some of the international speakers.

Unlike 2008, this year’s SMX SP (possible hashtag on Twitter?) will take place in a single day, not two.

The full agenda should go out soon, stay tuned.

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This is for those of you fans of international PPC: Ask.com is running a PPC campaign in Brazil trying to drive more users to its search engine.

But when you do a search on Google for restaurante São Paulo (restaurant São [...]]]> This is for those of you fans of international PPC: Ask.com is running a PPC campaign in Brazil trying to drive more users to its search engine.

But when you do a search on Google for restaurante São Paulo (restaurant São Paulo) you get an ad poorly written using the dynamic keyword insertion tool.

Ad copy in Portuguese says: “find restaurant in Sao Paulo on Ask Restaurant in Sao Paulo on Ask now!”

But things get really messy when you do the same search on Ask’s brazilian website. Check the results on the right side of the page.

Weird.

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According to a new Nielsen report Brazil is the country with more people using social networks websites. Brazilian users are also leading on time spent.

Nielsen reports that 80% of online users in Brazil are registered on social networks, followed [...]]]> According to a new Nielsen report Brazil is the country with more people using social networks websites. Brazilian users are also leading on time spent.

Nielsen reports that 80% of online users in Brazil are registered on social networks, followed by Spain with 75%, Italy 73% and Japan 70%.

Facebook is the leading network in the world with more than 108 million unique users, but only 2% of brazilians are using the website. Undisputed leader is Google’s Orkut, with 70% reach, making it the world leader on domestic audience reach.

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Social Networking is a very popular activity in Latin America and Brazil is making a serious point about it.

A comScore study involving all countries with more than 10 million internet users revealed that social networks reached 87% of Canadians and [...]]]> Social Networking is a very popular activity in Latin America and Brazil is making a serious point about it.

A comScore study involving all countries with more than 10 million internet users revealed that social networks reached 87% of Canadians and 85% of Brazilians during September 2008 (9.3 points increase when compare to last year), taking the second place from UK.

According to the same study, Orkut is still and by far the leading network in Brazil, with 21 million unique users last September, five times more than the second one.

Google is allowing advertising on Orkut again: text ads as part of the content network and banners on profile pages (CPM model).

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There are always room for improvements, but my overall impression of SMX São Paulo 2008 was positive.

In order to avoid duplicated content I’m linking to Sara Holoubek’s post at DM News.

No [...]]]> There are always room for improvements, but my overall impression of SMX São Paulo 2008 was positive.

In order to avoid duplicated content I’m linking to Sara Holoubek’s post at DM News.

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SMX franchise will have its first edition in Brazil on August 7th and 8th.

Among the key speakers are Bill Hunt, Director of Global Search Strategy at Neo@Ogilvy; Erica Schimdt, Global Search Director at ISOBAR, and Sara Houlobek, Consultant, DMNews [...]]]> SMX franchise will have its first edition in Brazil on August 7th and 8th.

Among the key speakers are Bill Hunt, Director of Global Search Strategy at Neo@Ogilvy; Erica Schimdt, Global Search Director at ISOBAR, and Sara Houlobek, Consultant, DMNews Columnist & SEMPO Board of Directors.

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As everyone knows Microsoft had given up Yahoo (for now, I think).

In Brazil that means nothing, because here Yahoo and Microsoft are still operating together, as during the early days of Overture.

Therefore, the “Search duopoly” mentioned by Danny Sullivan [...]]]> As everyone knows Microsoft had given up Yahoo (for now, I think).

In Brazil that means nothing, because here Yahoo and Microsoft are still operating together, as during the early days of Overture.

Therefore, the “Search duopoly” mentioned by Danny Sullivan in his AdAge article a couple of days before the deal went off, is already a reality in Brazil, where Google is still a dominant player and Yahoo (even combined with Microsoft) cannot face his leadership. And besides those two, there are very few relevant options for your search campaign.

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For the 8th consecutive year Meio&Mensagem , the local “Ad Age”, published its Most Admired Publishers list. There are 6 categories: TV, paid TV, radio, newspaper, magazine, and internet.

Internet category was introduced only in 2004 and has being lead [...]]]> For the 8th consecutive year Meio&Mensagem , the local “Ad Age”, published its Most Admired Publishers list. There are 6 categories: TV, paid TV, radio, newspaper, magazine, and internet.

Internet category was introduced only in 2004 and has being lead by UOL (Universo Online) since then. The hegemony ended this year, when Google ranked in first, seconded by UOL.

The other top ten publishers are, in order: Terra, Globo.com, MSN, Estadao.com, Abril.com, Yahoo, iG and Lancenet.

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Yahoo launched a few weeks ago the Yahoo Go application for mobile in Brazil.

I have being using the 1.0 version in English for quite some time, but the new version keeps the same features, but now it’s avaiable [...]]]> Yahoo launched a few weeks ago the Yahoo Go application for mobile in Brazil.

I have being using the 1.0 version in English for quite some time, but the new version keeps the same features, but now it’s avaiable in Brazilian portuguese (prior to that only portuguese from Portugal).

But it also still showing usability problems. For instance, you cannot hide the application on your Blackberry to check email or send SMS. Also, I cannot check all my Flickr albums.

Is anyone facing same problems? Would love to hear your comments.

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IAB Brazil’s Search Engine Marketing Committee launched last week a SEM Glossary. Main objective is educate the market about main terms and definitions.

The document is in portuguese and is available for download at IAB website

Members of IAB Brazil SEM [...]]]> IAB Brazil’s Search Engine Marketing Committee launched last week a SEM Glossary. Main objective is educate the market about main terms and definitions.

The document is in portuguese and is available for download at IAB website

Members of IAB Brazil SEM Committee are major search engines and portals, among them Google, Yahoo, MSN, Buscapé, UOL, IG, and SEM agencies such as AgênciaClick, Cadastra, FBiz, HotList, MediaContacs, MídiaClick, MídiaDigital and Neo@Ogilvy, and vendors (Predicta and Unica).

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Last week Google finally launched the “get directions” feature to Brazilian maps. That is a great feature for those using Google Maps mobile application.

And, of course, this is the first major step towards local search in Brazil.

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Yahoo started this week the roll-out of Panama in Brazil. All accounts are being updated (or upgraded as the notification email says) to the “new sponsored links system“.

As far as I know Brazil is the first latin american country [...]]]> Yahoo started this week the roll-out of Panama in Brazil. All accounts are being updated (or upgraded as the notification email says) to the “new sponsored links system“.

As far as I know Brazil is the first latin american country being upgraded to Panama. And that’s a smart move, since it’s the biggest market by far.

Yahoo really need good news after the recently defections on its network

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UOL (#1 ISP and top 5 web destination) and Buscapé (#1 comparison shopping website in Brazil and latin America) are leaving Yahoo’s content network.

Google now has partnerships with all major brazilian horizontal portals, but Yahoo and MSN: ]]> UOL (#1 ISP and top 5 web destination) and Buscapé (#1 comparison shopping website in Brazil and latin America) are leaving Yahoo’s content network.

Google now has partnerships with all major brazilian horizontal portals, but Yahoo and MSN: iG, UOL and Terra are part of search and content network; Globo.com ( webdestination owned by Globo TV ) has a deal with YouTube (which by the way now has a portuguese version) to provide video content.

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Miami will held the second edition of SES Latino next month. This is the only SEM conference targeting US Hispanics and latin america audiences and companies.

The event is increasing its popularity among brazilian professionals, and all top SEM [...]]]> Miami will held the second edition of SES Latino next month. This is the only SEM conference targeting US Hispanics and latin america audiences and companies.

The event is increasing its popularity among brazilian professionals, and all top SEM agencies will be presenting: HotList, MediaContacs, MídiaClick and MídiaDigital will have its tops executives in several panels.

A week later, Ad-Tech Latino will open its doors for the first time, but with a broader content. A lot of brazilian executives there too.

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Orkut Buyukkokten, the engineer behind Google’s social network website, is visiting Brazil for the first time.

He is in Rio de Janeiro this week, and will visit São Paulo (including a breakfast at GooglePlex with a select group of clients) next [...]]]> Orkut Buyukkokten, the engineer behind Google’s social network website, is visiting Brazil for the first time.

He is in Rio de Janeiro this week, and will visit São Paulo (including a breakfast at GooglePlex with a select group of clients) next week and after that Belo Horizonte, where Google has a research&development facility.

Orkut is the #1 website in Brazil and 8th in the world. 57% of Orkut users are from Brazil, accounting for more than 22 million of unique visitors/month. USA stands at second place, with 18% of users.

Here’s a link to my personal blog with a photo and here is Orkut’s photo album in Brazil.

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