For marketers of every size, the past few weeks have been....terrible. And for our partners in advertising media, its been mostly terrible as well.
The good folks at eMarketer (using data from Advertising Perceptions) have provided a fresh podcast covering the impact of advertising budgets in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic in the US, and the results are not all that surprising for many of us.
The below chart is based on respondents who identified different media that have either been cut, paused, or stopped since the start of the pandemic, and the one medium that has basically held steady.
Media typically best considered for branding and awareness, such as display ads, social media and television, have been understandably hit as retailers, restaurants and businesses of every size have been hit by the shelter in place orders.
Despite the generally negative news since this pandemic struck, it is interesting to note that one medium has retained its position: paid search.
Because for many categories, products and services, people are still searching for a solution or information, and the tool that everyone uses is search.
Clearly, the above results cover a broad range of industries and business types, so 'your mileage may vary'. For brick and mortar businesses with no online sales channel facing an uncertain shut-down, no amount of paid search ads will help at this point.
But while the end of the current crisis may not be clear, and the behavior of this virus is studied in order to find a cure or vaccine, we can see that the behavior of humans is pretty consistent overall.
And maybe that's something to be happy about today.
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