Search ad spending in the US will rise by 5.9% this year, significantly below trend, in the face of the massive disruption to consumer lifestyles. But the pandemic is setting search up for a bigger future.

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.

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.