Crisp creates first mobile news site for Latin America

By Mickey Alam Khan

June 24, 2008

New tempo for el tiempo

Mobile site developer Crisp Wireless has created a mobile news site for Casa Editorial El Tiempo, Colombia's leading media conglomerate.

The site at http://m.eltiempo.com is claimed to be Latin America's first mobile news site that's off-deck and Colombia's first media WAP site. It also signals New York-based Crisp's foray into the Hispanic community in the United States and overseas.

"Mobile news sites in Latin America are on-deck and non-publisher, meaning that the carriers develop with third parties such as integrators their own news offering supported on news agencies including Reuters, EFE, AP, AFP, et cetera," said Juan Felipe Castano Velasquez, content portals director for El Tiempo, Bogota, Colombia.

"We are the first publisher to offer a full mobile site with its brand to reach our audience and integrate our advertisers into it," he said.

The El Tiempo mobile site will target not just consumers in Colombia, but those Colombians living in the U.S. and Latin America.

The mobile site has five content categories such as Colombian, world, finance, entertainment news and sports.

Consumers can access the El Tiempo mobile site through any mobile phone.

An estimated 2.16 million Colombians live in the U.S. and 1.8 million in other parts of Latin America outside of Colombia.

According to El Tiempo, 33.5 million Colombians, or 78 percent of that country's population, subscribe to mobile services.

Ninety percent of most mobile marketing efforts in Latin America are based on text.

ElTiempo.com is claimed as the top Internet destination in Colombian with 5.5 million unique visitors a month. Though there are 10 million Internet users in Colombia, there are far more mobile subscribers.

"Colombia has had an active growth around the Internet in the past two years, but has had an even more attractive growth in the mobile arena for the past five years," Mr. Castano said.

"Our digital strategy has been to distribute our content and services on the most massive digital channels available," he said, "therefore it's an obvious step for us to go after the mobile audience with our contents and services."

Founded in 1911, Casa Editorial El Tiempo's El Tiempo newspaper is the highest circulation daily in Colombia. It is also the only non-tabloid daily newspaper with national distribution.

Spanish media giant Grupo Planeta last year bought Casa Editorial El Tiempo.

The El Tiempo online advertising sales team will work with Crisp to offer mobile and cross-platform integrated media buys to advertisers nationwide and in Latin America.

"We currently are not targeting a specific demographic with our mobile site," Mr. Castano said.

"As a mirror to our online strategy, we target anyone in the country that's interested in being up to date on breaking news via his or her mobile phone," he said.

El Tiempo joins the Crisp Wireless Publisher Network which comprises more than 200 mobile Web sites for 45 media houses and brands including Gannett, Time Warner, A&E Television Networks, NBC Sports and Discovery Communications.

Other Crisp clients are Bravo Cable Network, Hearst Digital Media, Hachette Filipacchi and Paramount Pictures.

El Tiempo doesn't currently have any advertisers for its mobile site.

"We are working with a couple of advertisers right now to get them on board our new mobile site pursuing a sponsorship model rather than a CPM model," Mr. Castano said.