The pandemic led to many upward revisions of our UK digital user forecasts. Some changes (podcast listeners) will be permanent, while others will be temporary (digital gamers). Our social network user numbers, meanwhile, didn’t change much at all.

Digital advertising confounded the conditions of the past year or so and will attract more than three-quarters of total media ad spending in 2021—£19.23 billion ($24.66 billion). Video has been the biggest driver of digital spend during this time.

eBay rolls out lending to UK SMBs: The ecommerce giant is partnering with embedded finance platform YouLend to extend loans to its sellers—giving the former a chance to make itself stickier for platform sellers and the latter access to data and loan growth.

Virgin Money boosts UK SMB lending experience with partnership: The UK bank’s latest fintech team-up demonstrates a focus on pivoting to post-pandemic customer retention.

Global insurers have been rocked by large, unexpected payouts and falling revenues amid the coronavirus pandemic. Yet, P&C and life insurers in leading markets will still increase their tech spend and accelerate their digital transformations in the next several years to enhance the online user experience.

The ad market in the UK suffered during 2020, but the decline in spending was only marginal as digital investment took up much of the slack. Indeed, the resilience of digital formats has been palpable amid the pandemic.

On today's episode, we discuss why companies are now making a sustainability push, examples of companies incorporating sustainability practices, and how much sustainability initiatives really matter to consumers. We then talk about the potential impact of a new Digital Markets Unit regulatory body, and what store closures and returning to the office look like in the UK. Tune in to the discussion with eMarketer principal analysts at Insider Intelligence Karin von Abrams and Victoria Petrock.

A key UK pandemic SMB loan program turns 1: The Bounce Bank Loan Scheme provided £46.53 billion ($59.67 billion) to strapped businesses and offered neobanks a chance to grow their books—but lenders now have to deal with repayments and keeping the borrowers.

Lloyds and Starling top Q4 2020 UK account switching list: The pair took first and second place, respectively, in net account switches—and their different customer acquisition approaches show how to succeed as account switching rebounds from the pandemic.

Search had a challenging time during the pandemic. Spend grew just 5.3% to £7.34 billion ($9.41 billion) in 2020, down from 17.7% the previous year and significantly down on our pre-pandemic estimate of 12.2% growth. However, this latest forecast is a reversal on our interim August 2020 estimate, when we expected a decline of 1.7% for the year.

Here are the 10 most visited fashion sites in the UK

Twenty-two percent of fintechs that took part in the UK’s regulatory sandbox have shut down, highlighting that doing so doesn’t guarantee market success, but fintechs should still participate to benefit from the Financial Conduct Authority’s regulatory support.

Programmatic ad spending will account for 93.6% of total UK display ad spending this year, or £7.90 billion ($10.09 billion). Open exchanges, though, will account for a diminishing proportion of that total; spend declined 2.4% in 2020.