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.

An expected economic recovery in 2021 bodes well for Canada’s advertising market.

Total ad spending in France and Germany took a big hit in 2020, as a result of the pandemic. But digital advertising bucked that trend and will lead a strong double-digit recovery in ad outlays during 2021.

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.

Last year, China was the only market to see overall ad spending growth, although digital ad spending performed well almost everywhere. This year, every country will see growth in almost every category.

Traditionally, travel advertisers including online travel agencies are among the biggest search ad spenders on Google. That business tanked last year, but ecommerce-related search advertising outperformed thanks to the supercharged digital retail environment.

US advertisers increased their investments on digital media by almost 15% last year despite a pandemic and recession, looking for flexibility and accountability.

Google’s secret anti-competitive project revealed: New court documents show that Google gave itself preference in its ad exchange, confirming long-held suspicions that the tech giant was running a monopoly.

I'm feeling lucky: Google's raking in search ad revenue

As the pandemic drove consumers to move their spending online in 2020, Amazon benefitted in a big way. But it wasn’t just its ecommerce business that grew by double digits. Its advertising business grew by 52.5% last year, pushing Amazon’s share of the US digital ad market past 10% for the first time. This has only strengthened its position as the No. 3 ad publisher in the US.

Google's Chrome wasn't the first browser to put the kibosh on third-party cookies. Phil Acton, country manager for the UK, Benelux, and France at end-to-end programmatic platform Adform, joins eMarketer principal analyst at Insider Intelligence Nicole Perrin to discuss how the company has been testing cookieless targeting with publishers in Europe, where Apple's Safari and Mozilla's Firefox have significant market share, as well as the importance of supply path optimization (SPO).