Now the dust is (hopefully) settling “post-COVID” — if that’s where we are. How did all that happened change the industry we all work in/with? What implications are there for us in all this? 

A “work from home” two-three years meant a big progression in areas like Connected TV (CTV) and in e-commerce, where the “pieces of the jigsaw” were already in place for growth pre-pandemic but which the COVID-era help accelerate. 

The way the ad industry has emerged may have also changed the way it works, too — something we need to be aware of. 

During COVID, we saw that many advertisers paused their ad campaigns. In the early days of the pandemic, it was said that digital advertising was at a big disadvantage. It was seen to be easy for advertisers to “flip the switch” and stop ad spending as they tried to figure out what to do next. 

But by the time we got to 2022, when advertising money triggers started to flip back on, it became clear they were starting to flow again online — but in a different way than we had seen before in certain areas. 

Everybody became more data-driven and more agile during this period of a desperate desire to recover, mainly because every penny of ad spend now had to count. 

On the positive side, agency ad buyers realised how certain parts of their industry were catapulted forward as consumers stayed in their homes during the pandemic. Digital began to come to the fore.   

Generally, flexible buying and an ability to switch messaging and direct-response buys (that showed encouraging ROI) were in high demand by many advertisers. These are people who, through COVID, had no idea what the next week or month was going to look like.  

There seemed to be two immediately obvious, overarching areas where the ad industry saw leaps ahead during the pandemic.

1. Connected TV  

As soon as pandemic began, the streaming binge began. Platforms launched as people were forced to stay in their homes. Trading desks and media expected this streaming revolution to happen over several years. It ended up taking just a few months.  

Since then, it’s sped up even more. Everyone was at home watching more video, and “commuting to work” time was in many cases given over to more media consumption. 

That consumer behaviour has permanently shifted. And advertisers are now having to adjust. Yes, the likes of Netflix saw subscribers decline in 2022 (maybe due to the proliferation of platforms suddenly available), but they have an answer in the form of a range of subscription offerings — some with ads, some without.

Time will tell as to success, but with the combination of Google’s announcement around cookies and identity and CTV being outside of their control, we may see ad spend start to flow there.

2. E-commerce  

Advertising brands have worked for many years on getting customers relaxed with the idea of buying something they haven’t touched, tried on, or even seen. But during COVID, many consumers didn’t have much choice and have turned online to order groceries, essentials, household accessories, and other such items. 

Shopping at physical stores may pick up again, but the retail industry has changed forever. There seems to be a different consumer behaviour that’s now been built. If you’ve ordered “stuff,” — takeaway food, for example — many times from your smartphone, the provider’s app is probably on your phone, and you’ve adopted the corresponding behaviour. 

It took a pandemic to get people to use their phone “en masse” to buy things with. Something I, personally, had been trying to enable for years prior. Who would have thought? 

The rise of e-commerce was evident in companies like Snap and Amazon, where advertisers used, for example, Augmented Reality (AR) for virtual “trying-on” as the changing rooms in many retailers remained closed. 

Pinterest was another platform to note as consumers searched the platform for ideas and inspiration, shopping along the way.

A new baseline seems to have been laid down. Much of what e-commerce embraces is reducing friction and helping people save time/effort, which is a tangible benefit that doesn’t go away — even when people can shop in-store again if they want to. 

From my own observations in the ad industry, post-pandemic, creativity seems to beburgeoning. It’s encouraging young creative talent wanting to work in a new flexible way that suits them. And that’s good for agencies and for media, as we — if we approach it correctly — will all reap the rewards of more investment.

Conclusion 

We in news media stand to benefit from the above if we have the right mindsets, right talent, right approach, right skill sets, and right relationships. 

Can we use the CTV model to our benefit with our own range of subscription offerings? Ultimately, can we create more areas to gain first-party data and use it to produce insights for advertisers alongside a range of new ad products our advertisers want to buy into?

And what about e-commerce? Many publishers the world over are looking for extended revenue streams and are focusing efforts on e-commerce as being one of the major sources of new revenue.

Are we using the above observations around new tech, new thinking, and new working environments to firstly show our advertisers that we understand it all? And secondly, to deliver to those advertisers a suite of ad products and services that play into the newly created field of play?

Once again, knowledge is power. Do you have the power to influence and change your operation to suit? I hope so. 

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