Ecommerce helped retail out of a sticky spot during the pandemic, and those habits formed during lockdowns will endure, as digital demands more attention than ever—37.5% of all retail sales this year will be ecommerce sales.

Uber Eats is partnering with Tesco to bring groceries to UK customers, with delivery guaranteed within an hour, the company announced. Uber is also expanding its partnership with Albertsons to include over 2,000 stores, per a press release. Publix has begun offering 15-minute grocery delivery in Miami through a partnership with Instacart, the delivery platform said.

Food and grocery delivery has spiked during the pandemic. Apps like SkipTheDishes, Uber Eats, and Instacart have gained new users who turned to delivery out of necessity. For marketers, these apps present a new opportunity to reach consumers with ad products rich in intent and location data.

US digital grocery sales grew 63.9% year over year during the pandemic in 2020. In 2021, sales will reach $122.39 billion. This report details the emerging trends in digital grocery and the implications for key players in the space.

Higher levels of online shopping in Western Europe will persist post-pandemic. In the UK—where online food buying was already well established—26% of adults surveyed by McKinsey & Company in May said they’d do more digital shopping for groceries after the pandemic, and 22% reported they’d do more digital buying overall.

Next year in the UK, digital video ads will make gains, Brexit will continue to complicate ecommerce and data privacy rules, and retailers will reimagine the in-store experience.

UK. Draft UK Legislation Is Set to Supercharge Scrutiny on Facebook. The UK’s draft Online Safety Bill, which was published in May 2021 and has been debated in Parliament, will put the onus on tech firms to protect their users from harmful content. If they fail to maintain that duty of care, they could face a fine of up to 10% of their annual global turnover.

However, despite the growth of digital grocery, online sales will amount to just 16.8% of overall grocery sales in 2025, per our estimates.

The pandemic super-charged digital habits in the UK, particularly among higher-income groups. These people are also in a better place financially as pandemic restrictions lift, but there’s pent-up desire to spend across all income brackets.

UK retail resembles US retail in many ways, but the UK has nearly four times the mcommerce penetration of total retail sales. Ecommerce generally took off more steeply in the UK than in the US and will account for 37.5% of total UK retail sales in 2021.

From July 2020, Loop has also been available in the UK, in partnership with Tesco. The UK trial is for digital shoppers only, but Tesco delivers to any mainland address in England, Scotland, or Wales. RePack—which debuted in Europe about four years prior to a US trial in 2019—applies the same idea to parcels, not products.

The pandemic was disastrous for many retailers; we estimate that total retail sales worldwide plunged 2.8% in 2020. Though, while many physical stores were shuttered, digital retail sales soared by over 25% in a single year.

Amid the countless (mostly unpleasant) surprises brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, one development was entirely predictable: the surge in online ordering of groceries and other essential items.

In less than two weeks' time, the coronavirus pandemic completely changed the ways in which millions of UK residents grocery shop and order food. On March 20, Prime Minister Boris Johnson ordered cafes, bars and restaurants to close for eat-in customers; three days later, all residents except workers in essential jobs were told to stay home as much as possible, going out only for groceries, medical needs or solo exercise.

Even with a partial lifting of lockdown measures, the coronavirus continues to limit movement of people—and this has hit the UK high street hard. From retailers with a high dependency on physical stores to restaurants and coffee shops without delivery facilities, the obstacles have proven insurmountable for some. For others, the longer-term question is, "Will the UK high street be able to recover when (and if) normalcy returns?"

Advertisers of consumer packaged goods (CPG) in the UK will spend £2.04 billion ($2.60 billion) on digital ads in 2020, up 6.6% year over year. Any growth is good growth in the current environment, but this will represent the most modest growth across all the industries we forecast to increase spending this year.