Digital

While summer is still winding down, advertisers are shifting focus to executing holiday media plans. This season is typically the most important time of year for many businesses, yet early data expects this year’s retail sales to decline amidst the ongoing upheaval from the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), along with the challenges of digital disruption overall.

IAB’s sixth 2020 buy/sell-side survey sees the “light at the end of the tunnel” for digital advertising, according to media buyers and sellers. In short: Digital ad spend for 2020 is expected to end with a 6% increase versus 2019.  The news, however, is dour for traditional media.

When an unprecedented global pandemic forced many countries, cities, states and provinces to take drastic and restrictive social distancing measures, consumers had to hunker down. Like elsewhere in the world, consumers in the U.S. had to quickly adapt to not being able to do the things that were normal aspects of daily life: dining out, catching a ballgame with pals that weren’t cardboard cutouts—even just running out for groceries.

ith so much of modern life occurring in the digital realm, more and more personal information is being captured online and traded between brands as a way to better understand their consumers. But what started as a way to make users’ lives easier by serving up convenient, personally relevant information has morphed into what’s perceived as a shady, underhanded economy of consumer data wheeling and dealing.

NGL Collective has announced a strategic partnership with Data Management Platform, INFINIA, to offer advertisers greater one-to-one brand connections with the digitally-connected U.S. Latinx audience. 

Over-the-top streaming just had its largest quarter of growth in Q1 2020, yet many brands are having trouble finding success on this emerging platform or not investing at all. It is the fastest growing channel by ad dollars in the US and has recently gained the largest share in time spent viewing of any channel across all ages. The data shows OTT is changing the way consumers view video content and provides advertisers a familiar way to plan and reach them.

As Americans hunkered down under stay-at-home orders for much of March and April, they unsurprisingly consumed more mobile media. The added mobile time, however, wasn’t distributed equally. Some long-term trends, such as greater consumer interest in mobile video and gaming, accelerated as people sought diversion. Other longer-term trends, including digital audio, stagnated as commuting time fell precipitously.