US marketers allocated more than $7 billion in digital ad spending to YouTube last year, eMarketer estimates, up 15.1% over 2018 spending levels. That resulted in more than $3.4 billion in net ad revenues for the video-sharing giant, with most of the remainder going to content creators.

eMarketer principal analysts Andrew Lipsman and Nicole Perrin discuss what consumers expect, and don't expect, from advertisements during the pandemic and provide some examples. They then talk about the Amazon and Instacart protest implications, the United Nation's call to creatives and how bad the retail store closures picture could look this year.

For the first time, we are breaking out direct-to-consumer (D2C) ecommerce sales. We define D2C companies as digitally native brands that started as independent online retailers selling directly to consumers. Our estimates exclude travel and event tickets, payments (such as bill pay, taxes or money transfers), food or drink services, gambling and other vice good sales.

According to our estimates, which were finalized prior to the coronavirus outbreak and subsequent cancellation of major sports programming, US TV ad sales were expected to climb 2.0% this year to $72.00 billion, a significant bump from 2019’s 2.5% year-over-year decline to $70.59 billion.

The coronavirus pandemic and its effects on the economy have upended media plans. eMarketer forecasting analyst Eric Haggstrom joins host Nicole Perrin to talk about research on what advertisers are doing to respond and which channels are getting hit hardest, as well as what current developments might mean for our next US digital ad spending forecast.

As with every other aspect of our lives, COVID-19 is impacting social media usage and advertising. Some of those changes, along with other important ad product launches, will continue to affect advertisers once the pandemic ends.

eMarketer principal analyst Victoria Petrock discusses how emerging tech innovations like social virtual reality, smart homes and 5G connectivity have shown new promise during the pandemic.

Mobile ad spending in the US was up 23.0% last year, we estimate, reaching $87.30 billion. That translated to just under two-thirds of all digital ad spending in the country.

As more people cut the cord, viewers are increasingly tuning in to live digital video services.

The Great Recession was a low point in the recorded history of advertising. Total media ad spending declined for two straight years in the US, and digital ad spending even dropped in absolute terms in 2009, the only time that’s ever happened. But most of the buy-side decision-makers surveyed in late March 2020 by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) think the coronavirus pandemic will have an even worse effect on US ad budgets.

Meal kits are experiencing an uptick in popularity as more people practice social distancing and turn to alternatives to limit their grocery store shopping.

eMarketer principal analysts Nicole Perrin and Debra Aho Williamson discuss how COVID-19 has changed engagement and the flow of ad dollars to the digital duopoly of Facebook and Google. They then talk about gamifying social distancing, Mozilla and Scroll's 'Firefox Better Web,' and Instagram 'Co-Watching.'

eMarketer principal analyst Mark Dolliver, junior analyst Blake Droesch and vice president of content studio Paul Verna discuss if people are falling back in love with their TVs, if online video dating will work, why we can't (yet) trust the internet, brands building goodwill during the pandemic, the un-college movement, what the average person looks like and more.

As governments pass stringent social distancing restrictions and corporations request employees to work from home in order to mitigate the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, business as usual is no longer usual. More than half (52.2%) of US business professionals surveyed by communication platform Fishbowl said their workplace has restricted travel or encouraged remote work due to the coronavirus.

The direct-to-consumer brand movement has reached a critical juncture. Which of these brands will make the leap into the mainstream before their runway runs out?

eMarketer vice president of business development Marissa Coslov, principal analyst Mark Dolliver and vice president of research Jennifer Pearson discuss whether distance learning works, what the knock-on consequences are and how parents are using digital to cope, handle, distract and educate their kids. They then talk about the postponement of the 2020 Summer Olympics, free Amazon Prime Video kids content and the impact Americans think COVID-19 will have on their personal finances.

Before the shift to digital, marketers didn’t have a measurable way to track their companies’ growth, which would allow them to prove their worth. As Deloitte Digital's CMO Alicia Hatch put it, “In the C-suite, we were essentially speaking Mandarin to English speakers. No one understood what we were talking about.”

Most influencers consider brand awareness to be their primary role when collaborating with marketers. But in the past year, social networks like Instagram have slowly begun opening commerce features to creators, indicating that influencer marketing could soon play a larger part in driving purchases on social media.