Digital video viewership in the UK will continue to rise this year. The pandemic has provided a particularly significant impetus for subscription video-on-demand services, while connected TVs have become the consumption device of choice.

This will be a tough year for holiday season retail in the UK. Shoppers will spend less in 2020, and much of their spend will fall outside the traditional November–December time frame, leading to the lowest holiday retail sales total since 2015.

The pandemic has hastened the digital future, but ill-conceived marketing tactics predicated on current events should be avoided. UK consumers are more wary of empty marketing rhetoric, so a mindful approach should be cultivated.

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 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.

The UK is something of a global leader when it comes to retail ecommerce. As a proportion of total retail sales, only China will trump the UK in ecommerce sales penetration this year (41.2% versus 30.9%, respectively). The UK’s fulfillment and delivery infrastructure is, as one would expect, quite mature.

Digital retail will have a huge impact on UK shopper trends in the coming holiday season. This year, ecommerce will account for nearly a third of all holiday spending, its largest share to date. Brick-and- mortar shopping, meanwhile, remains on the precipice.

When the UK government announced a nationwide lockdown for November, the impetus for retail holiday ecommerce shopping was ratcheted up another notch, given that Black Friday shopping falls within this period.