The pandemic has greatly affected the distribution of digital ad spending across industries. The bottom fell out of the travel industry, as will ad spending in the sector, while retail will consolidate its dominant position in digital ad spend this year.

The pandemic has caused the US automotive industry to reduce its digital ad spending by 18.2% in 2020. As car sales plummeted, dealerships closed, and manufacturing slowed, marketers backed off from performance initiatives and focused on branding efforts.

The travel industry has been devastated by the coronavirus pandemic unlike any other. Everyone from airlines to hotels to travel retailers have had to halt much of their operations and marketing as a majority of consumers around the world shelter in place.

The coronavirus has upended the US travel industry. Fears of infection, governmental measures restricting travel and access to public places, and the economic downturn will depress bookings, sales and ad spending in 2020 and beyond.

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.

The way consumers in China are shopping for luxury goods is changing amid the pandemic, with more purchases happening locally because of shelter-in-place protocols and travel restrictions.

No industry has been as devastated by the coronavirus pandemic and its effects as travel. Airlines, car rental agencies, hotels and resorts, online booking services, cruises and destination marketing organizations, and business travel support services found their operations ground to a near-halt for much of Q2 2020, and the situation has barely improved in H2.

In terms of the allocations of spend across industries, 2020 will be a story of two trends. On one hand, digital ad investments (and advertising investments overall, for that matter) in some sectors will decline immensely as a result of those industries facing insurmountable barriers. On the other, the pandemic will allow certain other industries to remain resilient in terms of digital spend, with relatively strong growth forecasts for the year. It comes as no surprise that the automotive and travel industries will experience huge spending declines in 2020. As the UK imposed strict lockdown rules, pretty much all travel was nixed for several months. Investment in digital advertising by these two industries will thus suffer, with spend declining by 20.4% for auto and by 36.7% for travel this year.

US travelers want COVID-19 vaccine passports

Virtual events became mainstream because of the pandemic. But for long-term success, event organizers and sponsors need a new virtual event playbook with best practices across the event life cycle. Read this report for the checklist.

The reports in this collection look at ad spending in the retail, financial services, computing products and consumer electronics, automotive, telecom, travel, health and pharma, media and entertainment, and CPG industries. Countries covered in this report series include the US, UK, and Germany.

In a difficult year for digital advertising overall, US travel industry spending will decline faster than any other vertical. It will bring up the rear in total spending and claim the smallest market share of all industries we cover.

In a difficult year for advertising worldwide, digital ad spending in Germany will see only 0.8% growth. Most of the industries we break out will decelerate their digital ad spend to some degree, while travel and auto will reduce theirs dramatically.

US B2B digital ad spending in 2020 will grow 22.6% year over year amid the coronavirus pandemic. This report breaks down the market factors and B2B-specific considerations that are driving this increase.

Few industries have been hit as hard by the coronavirus as travel. Recovery will be slow, with many sectors not returning to pre-pandemic levels until at least 2022. Some pandemic-related trends, like increased local “staycations,” may persist.