This report explores the impact COVID-19 will have on our latest regional estimates and trends for total media, traditional media, digital and mobile ad spending in six markets in Latin America: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru.

In Chile—often touted as being slightly more progressive than some of its regional peers—very few women believed that there was gender equality in the country. More than nine in 10 (91%) women in Chile felt that it was a macho country, according to a December 2020 Cadem survey for the Ministry of Women and Gender Equality.

The coronavirus pandemic has upended countless industries across Latin America, digital advertising included. This report looks at the impact the coronavirus will have on digital ad spending and how advertisers are responding to the pandemic in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru.

Brazil, Chile, and Argentina all rank in the top 15, and Mexico and Colombia are already in the top 10. All of them are on upward trajectory. As recently as 2019, not a single Latin American ad industry spent more than half of its dollars via digital. But by 2026, four countries (Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, and Argentina) will rank among the top nine in the world in digital ad spending share.

Thailand, Chile, and Vietnam once rounded out the top 10. Now, however, the list is dominated by advanced economies. Regional growth totals in digital ad spending will mirror the national trends evident above. North America will grow 37.5% this year. The EU-5 (in which we still include the UK) will expand by 30.5%. Europe overall will grow digital ad spending by 27.4%.

I am from Chile, and I moved to Puerto Rico. And the biggest difference between the two is that Puerto Rico, for the most part, is a bilingual country with Spanish and English. In the rest of Latin America, a very small percentage of the population speaks English.

Advertisers in Chile, for instance, grew their digital ad spending by 19.0% last year, despite overall ad spending contracting by 16.0%. The resilient growth in digital in 2020 means that 2021 will not see as big of an acceleration, as there is not as much catch-up spending waiting to be unleashed.

Pay TV penetration in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru will continue to decline through the end of our forecast in 2025. The number of households with pay TV will actually increase in Chile, Colombia, and Mexico, but household penetration will decline as pay TV household growth lags behind the increase in number of households overall.

More on this: The money transfer feature works in other Western Hemisphere countries—including the US, Mexico, Argentina, and Chile—plus markets farther out from Brazil like the UK, Australia, Portugal, and Japan. Remessa Online expects the Nubank partnership to amp up its user base from the 350,000 it has served within the last 12 months to 1 million.

For broadband, the world’s fastest countries are Monaco, Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, Romania, Switzerland, South Korea, Chile, Denmark, and Liechtenstein. Why it’s worth watching: According to the report, part of the problem in the US is inaccurate coverage maps for both broadband and mobile; and low speed requirements for broadband.