How much will US marketers spend on search advertising in 2020? The pandemic is a drag on search ad growth this year, but advertisers will still increase their paid search investments in the US by 5.9% to nearly $60 billion. About two in five digital marketing dollars will go to search ads as ecommerce retailers and others seek to drive conversions in a tough economy.

As the pandemic is permanently shifting more retail sales to digital channels, it’s also driving more search advertising by digital merchants. The overall level of economic disruption means our current forecast for search spending in 2020 and 2021 is lower than we predicted before the pandemic. But our new forecast for search actually exceeds our pre-pandemic expectations for 2022.