Targeting Teenagers Online in Brazil

The teenage consumer audience in Brazil represents some of the main sources of revenue for a number of brands and targeting this public can yield sizeable results. In this article we will describe the online habits of teenagers in Brazil and how to target this audience.

Teenage Consumers in Brazil

Although not precisely the most financially secure or heavy spending consumer segment, teenagers have for some decades been a crucial audience for brands in many sectors. With recent shifts in market trends, a large portion of teenagers have migrated from spending mostly in product categories such as clothing and fashion items to focusing their attention and budgets on technology products and other types of personal style items, and this way also turned into a notable target audience for these company segments.

More importantly, teenagers are spending a large portion of their days on social media networks, browsing websites and on other online environments, a behaviour that creates unprecedented opportunities for advertisers interested in this public. In Brazil, young users have for many years shown interest in new technology and composed the population segment with the highest user rates of computers, internet connections and mobile devices.

What makes this target audience interesting goes beyond the fact that these users are hyper-connected and innovation-savvy and are related to their consumer behaviour. Research from 2012 by credit card brand Visa found that 83% of Brazilians aged 13 to 18 spent all of their income in the short term, while 76% of them were impulse buyers.

The consumer behaviour of teenagers allows in particular for e-commerce websites to benefit from online advertising platforms, and reach potential consumers to quickly direct them to appealing offers.

Online Behaviour of Teenagers in Brazil

As noted by a report from 2013 by Cetic, or the Brazilian Center of Studies on Information and Technology, teenagers in Brazil display specific behaviours when online.

Place of Connection and Types of Devices

Brazilians aged 13 to 17 access the internet across multiple locations during the day. According to Cetic’s report, around 40% of them use the internet when at school, while 45% are connected when on the move and 70% use the internet at home.

The various types of locations for internet access are related to the multiple devices used by teenagers in Brazil, close to 71% of this audience use desktop computers, 45% use notebooks, 62% use smartphones and 16% use tablets for connection. The combination of these devices favors advertising that is able to track users from multiple devices during the day in order to reach them at the best occasion for conversion.

Favored Activities and Content

Teenagers in Brazil have some favored activities when online, one of which is the consumption of videos. Close to 41% of Brazilian teenagers watch videos everyday, while 47% watch videos at least twice during the week. As of recent years, some types of video content have gained a significant share of the attention of teenage viewers, such as comedy, gaming related content, make up tutorials and vlogs.

Social networks also have tremendous appeal to teenagers in Brazil. Around 90% of users aged 13 to 17 have profiles on the most popular social networks in the country, like Facebook and 66% of them access these networks on a daily basis. This public shows a positive reception to social network advertising, as 60% of these users claimed to have liked an advert and 38% have shared advertising content with friends.

Popular media outlets and social networks

Teenagers are not known for high consumption of news content, but there are a number of outlets that gather the attention of this public, particularly in the case of blogs. Social network and blog platform Tumblr, for example, has gained significant traction in Brazil due to its popularity among teenagers. This is also the case of social network Ask.fm, which recently expanded its user base in Brazil.

Content such as pop culture have also become highly popular among the teenage audience, and media outlets in this segment such as Omelete, Judão, Jovem Nerd and Sedentário & Hiperativo can prove to be viable media platforms to reach this public.