Global retail ecommerce sales will decelerate to a 16.5% growth rate in 2020. Even as consumers transitioned en masse to ecommerce during the pandemic, the drag caused by multiple recessions internationally has reduced the overall outlook.

The global retail market will reach $25.038 trillion in 2019, an increase of 4.5% and a slight acceleration in growth vs. the prior year, per our estimates. At the same time, it represents a marked decline from the five years preceding that, when global retail sales grew at rates between 5.7% and 7.5% each year.

Peru will be right on the heels of Finland and Russia, in 10th, since the two countries will tie for ninth place. Even though digital ad spending in Latin America tilts toward display—like social media and video—advertisers should keep search on their radar as retail ecommerce adoption surges in “other” emerging markets—like Colombia, Chile and Peru (22.6%)—as well as Mexico (20.9%).

But it’s also because of WhatsApp’s investments into the country, including payments and ecommerce through its partnership with JioMart, as well as India’s fast-growing smartphone user base. Aside from Indonesia, the rest of the countries we track in Asia-Pacific will see minimal monthly user growth this year.

Already firmly established in the US ecommerce market, Amazon is ramping up its international efforts. Prime is the primary driver behind its global growth, but the membership program looks very different from country to country.

The global ecommerce market will rise more than 20% in 2019, despite mounting economic uncertainty and declining consumer spending growth around the world.

Retailers across Western Europe are pioneering the use of AI to boost digital sales, and new options for delivery and returns are emerging. Yet Europe’s main markets have been slow to embrace social commerce.

Marketer Takeaway: Facebook has benefitted from a faster-than-expected rebound in social network ad spending, driven by a shift toward performance marketing, the rise in ecommerce, and a sustained increase in social media usage throughout the pandemic.

But there are three countries and one region where Instagram will have more users than Facebook in 2020: Japan, South Korea, Russia, and Central and Eastern Europe. In Japan and Russia, that has been the case since at least 2018, but South Korea will see Instagram surpass Facebook in users for the first time in 2020—one year earlier than we had predicted in our pre-pandemic forecast.

Even though digital ad spending in Latin America tilts toward display, advertisers should keep search on their radar as retail ecommerce adoption surges in “other” emerging markets—like Colombia, Chile and Peru (22.6%)—as well as Mexico (20.9%).

The 618 Shopping Festival is an event started by retail ecommerce site JD.com to celebrate its founding; 618 has become a popular mid-year shopping festival for other retailers as well. Alibaba reported sales of 20 million men’s shirts, 200 million facial masks, 140 million pairs of sunglasses, 50 million bottles of beer, 100 million crawfish during the same period [Alibaba].

Ecommerce is becoming a new ad battleground. Alibaba is already the largest digital ad seller in China and is now a model for other ecommerce companies, including Amazon, when expanding into advertising. Advertisers can expect more platforms, from JD.com to Walmart, to ramp up their ad efforts in 2019 on the back of Alibaba’s and Amazon’s successes.

Russia. Russia posted high penetration of PCs and smartphones in H1 2018, but other digital device takeup lagged behind European norms. Most internet users in the country still view TV via live broadcasts. Time-shifted options for watching TV content are limited and not widely used. Saudi Arabia. There’s a clear dichotomy between mobile and PC usage in Saudi Arabia.

“We knew that if you had phony influencers or bots that were pretending to be humans that it was cheating marketers, but we didn’t know the degree to which players like Russia or Iran were engaging in certain activities. Now, we know that the Venn Diagram is starting to overlap with digital advertising.