Google’s Colombia country manager, Laura Camacho Mackenzie, said she sees “exponential” growth in the future for Colombian e-commerce and online advertising, in a conversation with Caracol Radio on Tuesday.
“We are sure that the growth of e-commerce and online advertising will be exponential. It has happened in other countries and we know it will happen in Colombia,” said Camacho Mackenzie.
Camacho Mackenzie explained how her company can play a vital role in this coming boom. “What the search engines do, at the end of the day, is connect information from the companies with user searches… for this, in the case of Google, there is the tool Adword.”
The country manager said there is evidence that Colombians are willing to make more online transactions. She said the average Colombian spends 4.3 hours a day on the Internet, a factor which demonstrates that the user does want to make online transactions but the industry and commerce have to prepare for this. She added, “what Google wants is to support the country in the development of this environment.”
Camacho Mackenzie added that it is up to advertisers to convert in-branch shoppers into online shoppers. “It is a fact that in Colombia there are still people who carry out their transactions personally in shops, but it is the responsibility of the advertisers that the user finds them, [by] streamlining their online transactions processes and offers.”