The combination of growing inventory, brands pulling back ad spend, and the overall rising tide of ecommerce growth has reopened opportunities for many D2Cs.

Marketers will spend $17.37 billion on advertising on ecommerce sites and apps this year, according to eMarketer’s first-ever forecast of ecommerce channel ad spending. Ad spending on ecommerce properties will be up 38.8% from 2019—an acceleration of spending growth, thanks to the pandemic. By the end of this year, ecommerce channel advertising will represent 12.2% of US digital ad spend.

From the onset of the pandemic, US consumers have shifted to ecommerce for essential goods and personal care products, which is keeping consumer packaged goods (CPG) digital ad spending afloat. Curated by eMarketer, this collection of insights and interviews will help you understand how CPG marketers are facing the challenges in this industry today. Download this complimentary Roundup “Industry Insights: CPGs Speak Out.”

In a difficult year for retail sales overall, the US retail industry will remain the largest spender on digital advertising among all verticals, despite a huge deceleration in growth.

Prior to the pandemic, we expected search ad spending to grow by 14.4% this year as part of a trend of gradually slowing growth from 2018 through the end of our forecast period in 2024. When the pandemic upended those expectations, we revised our outlook in anticipation of a virtual halt to travel industry search spending. But as more information has come in throughout the summer and early fall about the pace of consumer ecommerce spending, we have again updated our estimates of search ad spending in 2020—this time, in a positive direction.

Ecommerce channel ad revenues at Amazon’s competitors, including Walmart. Search and the Ecommerce Channel. Per our first-ever forecast for ecommerce channel ad spending in the US, $17.37 billion will be spent within the segment this year, a 38.8% increase over 2019. That actually represents a slight acceleration despite—or perhaps because of—the pandemic.

Amazon’s net US digital ad revenues will rise by 41.0% this year as consumers shift dramatically to more ecommerce shopping and advertisers pay to get in front of shoppers at their leading destination.