YouTube viewers are pivoting to TV screens as their method of choice for watching content, a trend that experienced significant growth before and during the height of the pandemic. We estimate that 113.1 million US YouTube viewers, 52.8% of total viewers, watched the platform's content on connected TV (CTV) devices in 2020. Those numbers will increase to 130.8 million and 57.7% by 2022.

The pandemic accelerated payments industry digitization across the entire landscape, as merchants turned to ecommerce to keep doors open, consumers eschewed cash in favor of electronic and contactless payments, and payments technology providers rapidly developed and launched new solutions to keep up.

The Pandemic Has Reshaped Consumer Behaviors and Expectations. The pandemic has accelerated the adoption and use of virtual and nontraditional health channels—especially amid concerns over catching the coronavirus in a clinic or hospital.

General Mills CEO Jeff Harmening said demand will continue to be greater than pre-pandemic levels for quite a while, during the company’s recent earnings call. Petco CEO Ron Coughlin sees his industry as “resilient to inflation,” because pet owners need to provide food and care to their charges regardless of rising costs.

The accessibility and affordability of digital brokerages lured retail investors en masse pre-pandemic, while market volatility and elevated consumer savings kept new user growth strong over the past two years. As consumer behavior settles after the height of the pandemic, US players can no longer rely on swaths of new users and elevated trading volumes to drive revenues.

Toward the end of 2021, the pandemic was finally easing as stock markets boomed; the digital acceleration brought about by the pandemic was moving forward. Fast forward just a few months and the future looks much less predictable. Mounting inflation, the threat of a recession, the war in Ukraine, and continued supply chain challenges have begun to plague consumers and businesses alike.

US programmatic display ad spending was up more than 10% in 2020 despite the pandemic-induced recession and will rebound this year as advertisers continue shifting budgets to flexible, measurable media.

Retail ecommerce sales in Western Europe rose by 26.3% in 2020, to €481.54 billion ($539.18 billion). The pandemic is fueling other shifts in the retail landscape, too, such as a greater focus on buying local.

In many ways, Southeast Asia’s economic trends have been precisely a year behind the rest of the world during the pandemic. For the most part, the coronavirus spread more quickly in the region in 2021 than in 2020. Its impact on daily life was more severe in 2021, and quarantines and lockdowns were more common.

An FDA spokesperson said that the FDA has the flexibility to extend its enforcement discretion policy beyond the public health emergency. If it doesn’t, product developers should expect pre-pandemic regulations and requirements to be re-instated.

Lockdowns across Latin America at the onset of the pandemic caused in-store retail sales to plummet, and recovery to pre-pandemic levels has been a mixed bag. Sales for Cencosud, Falabella, and Magazine Luiza returned to pre-pandemic levels, for example, but Via, Americanas S.A., and Liverpool struggled to meet the mark.

Latin America’s cash culture runs deep, but digital payment methods have made significant gains among consumers during the pandemic. Consumers’ aversion to touching cash—for fear of getting infected with the coronavirus—led to sharp reductions in its use as a payment method.

On today's episode, we discuss how retailers are preparing for another pandemic-affected holiday shopping period, with the threat of empty shelves and a reimagined main street. Tune in to the discussion as eMarketer principal analyst Bill Fisher hosts principal analysts Karin von Abrams and Paul Briggs.

Tune in to our inaugural episode of Brand Anatomy, where we get exclusive looks inside leading brands. Today, eMarketer Briefing director Jeremy Goldman sits down with JibJab CEO Paul Hanges to discuss how the company—a leader in viral content dating back to 1999—listened to customer sentiment during the pandemic, improved its product, and reinvigorated its brand.

The pandemic has accelerated Gen Z’s digital buying behaviors. Pre-pandemic many Gen Zers showed a clear preference for in-store shopping and buying, despite their nearly universal use of digital tools to find products (451 Research, February 2020 blog post). The pandemic shifted more buying online among all generations.

Hispanic consumers have endured exceptional financial volatility—mostly bad—during the pandemic. Even in normal times, this population is a moving target, with its diverse components evolving in financial strength, degrees of acculturation, and digital engagement.

On today's episode, we discuss how people's attitudes towards cable changed during the pandemic, where cable is thriving, and how folks think about price. We then talk about how to count co-viewing, how much of a splash the new Paramount+/Showtime bundle can make, and how sports fans have changed. Tune in to the discussion with eMarketer principal analyst at Insider Intelligence Paul Verna.

The pandemic effect: As people’s pandemic-related precautions fade into the rearview mirror, nearly all food delivery companies are seeing their growth slow significantly for a variety of reasons, including more people returning to in-person dining, and rising inflation leading some to cut back on discretionary purchases such as food delivery.

More on this: For the past two years, consumers’ shopping behaviors have been characterized by pandemic-related concerns. While confidence had started to increase as concerns over the pandemic declined, Russia’s recent war on Ukraine combined with inflation has reversed that gain.