E-commerce, online videos send 2021 ad spending recovery to pre-pandemic levels

A new adspend forecast from media agency Zenith estimates a global adspend recovery of 11.2% in 2021 – surpassing the pre-pandemic peak by 6%. With a similar picture to WARC’s own forecasts, the advertising industry is returning but with some changes.

Why it matters

Performance-led, e-commerce advertising and brand advertising through online video are the engines of this growth, Zenith suggests.

The e-commerce shift manifests through particular gains in social media (up 25%) and paid search (up 19%), but it is important to note that a lot of this is down to an influx of new small and medium sized companies who began advertising in the pandemic.

Takeaways

• Online video is set to grow by 26%, reaching £49 billion in worldwide spend.
• Overall, Zenith expects digital advertising to grow by 19% in 2021, and increase its share of total adspend to 58%, up from 48% in 2019 and 54% in 2020.
• Cinema and out-of-home were the worst affected by COVID-related restrictions, shrinking by 72% and 28% respectively, and will enjoy the fastest recovery in 2021, with respective growth rates of 116% and 16%.
• Recovery is causing some inflation. The cost of TV advertising is up on average by 5% on 2021, way beyond its adspend growth rate of 1%.

Key quote

“The online video landscape continues to transform, fuelled by the growth of streaming services and connected TVs. Its continued evolution requires a radical rethink of how to build the optimal screen-neutral reach model. The ingestion of new data sources into TV planning also creates further opportunities to further sync TV and video planning” - Benoit Cacheux, Global Chief Digital Officer at Zenith.

Sourced from Zenith, WARC