Reclame AQUI

Felipe Paniago, Co-Founder and CMO

São Paulo, Brazil

2024

Reclame AQUI partners with Google to help connect consumers with great brand experiences

For more than two decades, Reclame AQUI has been a protagonist in transforming the customer service market, bringing companies and consumers closer together, promoting more ethical and transparent relationships. After adopting an ad-supported model, this valuable platform has a sustainable monetization strategy and can continue serving Brazilian consumers and brands.

Giving consumers a voice

We've all been there - we book a flight, get to the airport, and find out that our airline oversold the flight - preventing us from getting where we need to go. But when this unfortunate situation happened to Reclame AQUI founder Maurício Vargas, he decided to take action.

“Not finding an efficient way to solve this overbooking problem, Mauricio created a digital environment to publish his own complaint,” says Reclame AQUI co-founder and CMO Felipe Paniago. “Mauricio's idea was to have an uncomplicated place to register a complaint and, from there, establish direct, simple, and transparent communication with the company to solve a problem.”

Mauricio got friends and family to use the site, registering complaints they had after dealing with different companies. In a short time, the site's reach increased and more consumers turned to Reclame AQUI to have their voices heard.

“Today Reclame AQUI has more than 1.4 billion pageviews, is one of the most accessed sites in Brazil and has become a leader in reputation, trust, and opinion management,” says Felipe. “We have been in the market for 24 years, playing a major role in transforming consumer relations in the Brazilian service market.”

Being such an essential site for consumers, the Reclame AQUI team didn't want to put their platform behind a paywall. Instead, they adopted an ad-supported model - and turned to Google to monetize their rapidly growing site.

Ads take off

“In our case, revenue is not the ultimate goal,” says Felipe. “But, obviously, generating revenue can help us sustain our missions. We wanted to continue to be a space where good companies that treat consumers well and offer valuable experiences can expand their ability to impact customers - so we needed a strong monetization strategy.”

To build their monetization strategy, the Reclame AQUI team adopted Google Ad Manager. “We chose to use AdManager 360 because it meets all of our direct and programmatic sales needs in a single tool,” says Felipe.

Reclame AQUI started in 2020 by opening advertising spaces and digital inventories on the Reclame AQUI website in partnership with Google. This partnership was only possible after Google guaranteed the blocking of programmatic media for companies with a reputational status of “Bad” and “Not Recommended”. This means that only companies with a reputation of “Good”, “Great” and “RA1000” can advertise on the site.

“With the ads, we were able to sustain a media space that allows these good companies to amplify their voice to customers who want to find brands that respect the consumer,” says Felipe.

“In 2022, we increased the ads team and hired our first media specialist, an Adops/Adtech professional who was able to optimize our entire programmatic media structure,” says Felipe. “As a result, we had a 100% growth, doubling our ad revenue already in the second year of operation.”

In 2023, the Reclame AQUI team innovated with the “Reputation Media” vertical and made it possible for some partner companies to run direct campaigns with new product formats, such as Publieditorial, Native Ads, and segment sponsorships.

“With this new media product structure, we doubled the revenue volume for the second consecutive year, making the traffic monetization squad gain relevance within the company, reaching almost 10% of the company's total annual revenue,” says Felipe.

More growth, more consumer wins

With more revenue coming in, Reclame AQUI was able to expand its team, bringing in teammates that allow them to improve the product and the customer experience.

“Reclame AQUI currently has more than 400 employees working in all areas of the business,” says Felipe. “And our Traffic and Ads monetization vertical now has more than 15 professionals. The structure and the team responsible for media in the company is relatively new, but it stands out every semester, gaining prominence and representativeness in the company's strategies.”

After the partnership with Google, Felipe and his team are confident that they will continue to contribute to the company's growth and continue to make a difference in the lives of consumers.

“We are the main platform for consumer opinion and company research, under a dynamic reputational indicator molded according to the consumer relationship between companies and consumers,” says Felipe. “We want to continue helping Brazilian consumers make the best purchase decisions and be an indispensable tool for solving problems throughout the consumption chain.”

“With the ads, we were able to sustain a media space that allows these good companies to amplify their voice to customers who want to find brands that respect the consumer.”

About the Publisher

Felipe Paniago is Co-Founder and CMO of Reclame AQUI, which, with 1.4 billion pageviews registered in 2023, and more than 650 thousand registered brands, is the largest brand reputation research platform and reference in trust in consumer relations in the world. Graduated in advertising and propaganda with an MBA in marketing from ESPM, Paniago has always lived in the transformative environment of Reclame AQUI and closely follows the evolution of customer service in Brazil. He started his career in 2009 and, since then, has been innovating the Reclame AQUI brand in a creative way, reaching the main Brazilian media outlets. Together with the Grey agency, he won 25 Lions in Cannes, including the Grand Prix in the Mobile category for the Politician's Record Detector app campaign. In addition to Marketing, Paniago manages the company's sales vertical, ensuring that Reclame AQUI reaches companies so that they are in constant evolution of their services with consumers, generating experiences capable of retaining them.