Telefónica Digital today announced that it will make a multi million euro investment to kick start its access to the mobile advertising market in Brazil. The investment will use the UK model as a blueprint, with a local team put in place to accelerate the deployment of platforms and capabilities to harness the significant opportunity in Brazil.

Within an overall Brazilian ad market of €15 billion, which increased by 11% in 2011, mobile advertising is growing faster than in Western Europe, driven by the rapidly expanding adoption of smartphones.

The creation of a specialist mobile advertising team in Brazil will enable Telefónica and Vivo, its commercial brand, to drive revenues through faster implementation of media products and services. This includes push messaging, display advertising, loyalty products and location-based marketing.

Telefónica is further able to leverage its experience in building the mobile advertising market in Europe where it now has 23m customers opted in to receive tailored marketing communications via mobile.

“Brazil is booming and the advertising market is growing faster than Western Europe”, said Shaun Gregory, Director of Advertising at Telefónica Digital. “We will invest to build and deploy the best platforms, provide real time capabilities and accelerate these plans through acquiring the best people. Brazil is an exciting market for brands and agency groups, and we fully intend to leverage our knowledge and experience in other markets to make Brazil another important piece of the Telefonica global advertising family”

Telefónica Digital will take the learnings from the Brazilian market in developing its capabilities across the region.