Today’s sociopolitical events have lit a fire under brands to address social injustice and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in deeper ways than they have in the past. Companies are using marketing and advertising to respond to and support discussions about systemic racism and the Black Lives Matter protests, the fight for LGBTQ rights, the #MeToo movement, the COVID-19 pandemic, and issues of immigration reform, to name a few.

Walmart has reported a significant uptick in digital sales over the past six months, and it has likely won business from Amazon as the pandemic affected logistics.

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.

For knowledge workers, the coronavirus pandemic brought an abrupt change to daily work life. As many companies shut down their corporate offices—some out of regard for employee safety and others due to government mandates—the norm of conducting business from an office ceased. Without an in-person option, teams were forced into a distributed work model and given little to no time to prepare.

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.

China’s Singles’ Day is no longer just a discount shopping event, as participating digital giants are now leveraging livestreams, new product launches, and novel technologies to enhance customer engagement and the buying experience.

The pandemic has been able to make common what would previously have stood out as extreme amounts of screen time.

The screen-time wars are over in many households, with parents having surrendered en masse. In a period when large numbers of parents and school kids are stuck at home with one another, this is one battle many parents choose to forego, at least for now.

The large increase in live video viewers is one of the biggest digital media growth stories of the pandemic.

Early in the pandemic, most consumers went through a panic-buying period—stocking up on essential goods like toilet paper—as uncertainty over lockdown restrictions loomed.

The US election on Tuesday pits fundamentally different visions of the US against each other. It might seem trivial to look at how the election could affect the marketing world—but the impacts will be real.

Earlier this month, Mucinex unveiled Sickwear, a six-piece fashion collection that aims to help consumers get through the cold and flu season in style. While it may not be the typical route for a healthcare brand, its parent company RB has been leveraging different channels, including TikTok and now social commerce, to reach consumers—particularly those who may not be aware of its direct-to-consumer (D2C) business.

Pandemic-related stay-at-home mandates have accelerated OTT messaging app adoption in most parts of the world. In the US, however, alternative means of communicating, including Zoom and FaceTime, have hindered usage of OTT messaging services.

Worldwide total media ad spend is expected to record a growth of -4.5% this year to reach $614 billion. This is just slightly up from our previous forecast of -4.9% growth in June 2020, but a sharp contrast to our pre-pandemic estimate of 7.0%.

Many people turned to social media in recent months to stay connected with friends and loved ones and to share information. But the pandemic didn’t increase the number of people using social networks or messaging apps.

As the coronavirus spread in the first half of 2020, we might have expected radical changes in the media behavior of consumers around the world. But for the most part, that didn’t happen. That’s just one insight to emerge from eMarketer’s newly released 2020 Global Media Intelligence (GMI) Report, a detailed look at internet users’ engagement with digital and traditional media in 42 major markets, produced in collaboration with Starcom Worldwide and GlobalWebIndex.

Our new forecast for global mobile messaging app users shows that the pandemic has accelerated adoption of OTT messaging services, though not in every country nor to the same degree for every app.

The pandemic has brought an influx of new users for subscription OTT, live videos, and video games in 2020, but other activities such as social networking, mobile messaging, and digital video haven’t seen the same bump.

As companies like Twitter and Microsoft announce long-term remote work policies, business leaders are grappling with what their return-to-office plan may look like.

What has been dubbed the “streaming wars” in many markets—especially in the US—is more like a skirmish in Canada. Despite the influx of US-based services like Disney+ and Apple TV+ in the past year, and the presence of homegrown services like Bell Media’s Crave nationally and Vidéotron’s Club Illico in Quebec, Netflix is still by far the most popular subscription OTT service in Canada.