More than 6 months have passed since the beginning of the tough phase of the crisis caused by COVID-19 and related events. Quarantine, self-isolation and other concepts have become an integral part of life not only for consumers, but also for businesses.
Let's take a closer look at exactly how the crisis affected the internet marketing industry and how companies from different business areas are using online advertising tools.
- GDP, quarantine and consumer demand
- Forecast based on online statistics
- Go online
- Advertising and marketing
GDP, quarantine and consumer demand
Unsurprisingly, there is a direct correlation between the level of restrictive measures and gross domestic product (GDP). In addition, the declining activity curve (ie, the decrease in the number of those who leave the house, and the physical activity of their movements) appears to be symmetrical to the graph that reflects the change in the volume of transactional searches containing the word "buy". Search volume related to the word "buy" versus US GDP and activity level during the quarantine period. Sources: Google, Allianz Research, Qualified.One, Yandex, Otonomo, Apple, Euler Hermes Apparently, consumer demand has partially shifted to the Internet, but this, of course, was not enough to keep the economy at pre-crisis levels.
Tagged under: growth
The increase in the number of information requests is a clear and very understandable effect that self-isolation and the pandemic in general have led to. In the Russian-speaking segment in April, the number of queries to Yandex's web search containing the words “why”, “how” and “what” increased 1.6 times compared to March. Frequency of information search queries by months, 2018-2020. Sources: Qualified.One, Yandex It comes as no surprise that the lack of growth in information requests, which was noted in the previous report on March 28, 2020 , was just a matter of time.
Forecast based on online statistics
An interesting observation can be made by linear extrapolation of the current recovery mode using search engine statistics. It can be seen that, in addition to the unstable period of March-April 2020, the curves of the number of requests (according to Google data) change rather slowly relative to a certain linear trend. The volume of searches associated with the word "delivery" versus the level of activity during the quarantine period, and a linear extrapolation to the pre-crisis level. Sources: Google, Otonomo, Qualified.One, Yandex, Apple
Taking into account the above, the period of return to the pre-crisis level can be expected in the second half of October.
Go online
As soon as activity in the real world was sharply reduced due to the epidemic, in particular, communication almost disappeared, most of the companies were forced to transfer business processes to the Internet (at least partially). This, however, happened in different ways in different segments: while some only needed to speed up the processes that were already taking place, for others everything was chaotic.
A sharp spike can be seen on the charts in almost all the industries studied, but with certain differences.
Details specific to individual business sectors are discussed in the full version of the study .
Advertising and marketing
Following global changes, businesses were forced to adapt their marketing strategies. In general, these changes continue the trend of moving from conventional advertising channels to the Internet. The pandemic only accelerated the process. The volume of search queries related to digital agencies and advertising agencies, and a linear trend. Sources: Google, Qualified.One As you can see, the popularity of classic advertising agencies has long been declining, while digital services are becoming more and more popular. However, the coronavirus crisis has led to a change in the speed of this growth: demand for digital agencies at the end of the first quarter is growing faster than before. The pandemic has become a powerful catalyst for the digital transformation process in the advertising and marketing industry.
- . : Google, Qualified.One
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As it turns out, SEO is the most in-demand online channel in the US market: in August 2020, SEO services were searched 2.6 times more often than in August 2019. This means an increase of 160% per year .
Content marketing searches grew 33% year over year, while Google Adwords and targeted Facebook ads gained 21-22%.
However, global statistics are different: the leaders, on the contrary, are advertising on Facebook and Google Ads ( 36% and 40% growth ), slightly behind them - SEO and content marketing ( grew by 33% over the year ).
The current recovery process would most likely allow a return to pre-crisis levels of online behavior by the end of October.... Whether this happens or not depends on the emergence of new foci of COVID-19 and subsequent restrictive measures.