After the last six and a half months of turmoil, We’ve made it to Q4. 

Here is an attempt to cover an overview of what impact and uncertainty these changes have on the programmatic advertising during and post lockdown- opportunity, scope, and conclusions to watch in order to look for the way forward. 

As the world was moving into the lockdown, advertising spends settled across the globe, OOH and cinema recoiled spontaneously. The lifestyle and media consumption patterns of the consumers changed and social media, TV, gaming services, and all forms of digital consumption climbed-up. And hence Advertisers are getting online with digital advertising as this is now a winning solution to push commerce.

Seems the adtech is better placed to win out the pandemic? 

According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, almost a quarter (24%) of media buyers, planners, and brands have paused spending until the end of Q2, while 46% indicated they would adjust their ad spend across the same time period. The first three-quarters of the pandemic had a bigger impact than the 2008 financial crisis.

There is a strong argument on the above that even though the scope of digital media consumption has increased and is expected to change permanently, the data and parameters that were used for advising or directing advertising budgets is not the same now and is expected to change drastically in the future and considering the current consumer behavior, it could be wholly different in the future. This has caused advertisers to revise the budget and the type of campaigns they should run, leading to a drop in the pricing and spending across the market.

Businesses are affected and advertising budgets are slashed due to reduced competition.

The advertising space of the digital news publishers is on a boom but ironically advertising demand for such platforms is reduced as brands are avoiding impressions with Covid related content and are withdrawing spend and blocking keywords across programmatic channels on news websites.

Deep-rooted adjustments following COVID-19 

There are many calls before the Ad digital industry in order to move ahead in the “New Normal” scene emerging post lockdown. The change towards digital attitudes of people necessitates an alteration in the strategies of brand building for businesses.

As the lockdown bends, OOH advertising will be back and it will influence the initial digital shift. This influence will lead to improving the ways and ad industry plans to execute and measure the return on investment for the business. The industry appears to be in a superior position as they hold behavioral data collected through the pandemic and this will certainly help them to emerge faster and stronger from the crisis.