eMarketer principal analyst Mark Dolliver, junior analyst Blake Droesch, principal analyst Jillian Ryan, and vice president of content studio at Insider Intelligence Paul Verna discuss the major digital pivot to reimagined events amid COVID-19. Then, the usual suspects talk about Twitter's fight against election misinformation, TikTok's potential rivals, untapped marketing to lower-income customers, ecommerce within YouTube, and how cats aren't as heartless as they seem.

Apparel manufacturing company Dickies recently launched a digital-first content campaign to build on its ongoing diversity efforts. Amid the pandemic, it had to be shot by the very creators highlighted in it, using their own devices.

In a challenging year for advertising worldwide, Germany will experience a slowdown similar to that of every other market we track. Germany’s digital ad spending had grown at double-digit rates for each of the past three years, but pandemic-disrupted 2020 will see that growth slow to just 0.8%.

Based on a bottom-up look at the market, eMarketer has updated our estimates of US digital ad spending this year. eMarketer forecasting analysts Eric Haggstrom and Peter Vahle, along with junior forecasting analyst at Insider Intelligence Nazmul Islam, join eMarketer principal analyst at Insider Intelligence Nicole Perrin to talk about the building blocks of the forecast, what we know about performance at major digital ad sellers, and how it all adds up to the whole. Plus, they put our digital forecast in the context of other major media.

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.

TikTok’s future in the US is still uncertain, but any decision will affect a significant number of US consumers. We forecast that TikTok will have 65.9 million monthly US users in 2020, up from 35.6 million in 2019.

We previously expected there to be 80.5 million US pay TV households this year. We updated our forecast in August, and we now believe that figure will decline by 7.5% to 77.6 million. Our pay TV figures exclude virtual multichannel video programming distributors (vMVPDs), which deliver live TV over the internet.​

Amazon Prime Day 2020 will be unlike any other since its debut five years ago. Amid the backdrop of a pandemic and recessionary headwinds, this year’s event promises significant changes that will shake up the entire retail landscape heading into the holidays.

The pandemic has accelerated ecommerce growth in the US this year, with online sales reaching a level not previously expected until 2022. In our Q3 US retail forecast, the top 10 retailers by ecommerce sales will tighten their grip on the retail market.

The consumption of at-home media and entertainment thrived amid the coronavirus pandemic, but the total shutdown of live events and the pause on film and TV production will cause digital ad spending to decline in 2020.

The healthcare and pharma industry has been slower to embrace digital marketing compared with other verticals we track. Heavy regulation makes ad targeting more difficult, which has kept traditional media buys and in-person marketing popular.

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.

We expect the number of US pay TV households to decline by 7.5% to 77.6 million this year.

This report explores the latest developments in the social media landscape, including a look at TikTok Global, Instagram’s launch of Reels, and new election-related moves from Facebook and Twitter.

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.

The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated cord-cutting and boosted streaming video viewing.

Despite general pullback in digital ad spending across many industries this year, the healthcare and pharma industry will increase its digital ad spend by 14.2% to reach $9.53 billion. This will make it the fastest-growing industry after computing products and consumer electronics, we forecast.

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.

Digital ad spending in the US healthcare and pharmaceutical industry will grow by 14.2% to reach $9.53 billion in 2020. Growth is being fueled by ads related to COVID-19, including public service announcements, medical supplies and telemedicine.

The pandemic has caused reduced advertiser spending overall, leading to lower growth of in-app ad spending despite significantly higher numbers of ad placements. While in-app purchases (IAPs) never stopped growing amid the pandemic, publisher revenues have recently been shifting from in-app advertising to purchases.