Virtually every industry has been affected by the events surrounding the coronavirus pandemic and advertising has not been spared.
With budgets being pulled by brands overnight and publishers struggling to monetise their audience (ironically at a time when internet use is surging), media owners are rightly questioning what the impact will be on their business in the near and long term.
We’ve put together a detailed impact report, analysing the effects of Covid-19 on the advertising market, in particular how it pertains to digital spend, buyer confidence and future trends.
The key take aways are that most industry executives believe Q2 2020 will be the worst affected of the year. Whilst the online advertising industry in 2020 originally showed signs of strong growth year-on-year when compared with 2018/19, coronavirus has put paid to that. Revised forecasts expect a projected contraction of 12.7% in the online display advertising market for 2020. 2021’s revised forecasts show growth year-on-year when compared to 2020, but analysts do not expect this growth to bring 2021 back in line with original, pre-Covid-19 projections.
There are green shoots too. While digital display is still pulled from media plans across the board, fewer media planners expect to keep pulling display budget than did when they were asked at the beginning of the pandemic. Brands are working out how to shift their messaging and get in front of consumers in a new way.