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How COVID-19 is changing consumption and media
0 As the coronavirus outbreak has turned into a global pandemic, individuals, governments and businesses around the world are striving to figure out the best ways to protect themselves, their families, their citizens and their employees. With everyone legitimately turning their attention to what matters the most - health and the preservation of life – their responses are drastically changing the way we live, and, as a consequence, impacting our entire economy. In particular, we see many companies going all out not only to minimise disruption for their consumers, but also to embrace a bigger role in supporting them as people with many facets of their daily lives. This article is intended to help business leaders quickly understand some of the key trends at play in consumer behaviour and the media landscape, and how brands are responding. It has been updated as of March 16th and reflects changes that we have observed across the markets within which we operate. For more specific trends and guidelines about your market, reach out to your local iProspect team today, and don’t forget to protect yourself and your relatives by following the World Health Organisation or your local authorities’ guidelines. Consumer Behaviour In affected areas, we see consumer behaviour changing in multiple ways: 1. Increase in news consumption. According toCloudfare, people are accessing news and information websites about 30% to 60% more in Italy. Search for news doesn’t only concern traditional news outlets: online communities also become priority destinations. Reddit’s r/coronavirus board went from a thousand members in January 23 to more than 1.2 million in the last few weeks. Evolution of traffic in Italy As a response to this increased usage of digital, companies like Comcast and T-Mobile in the United States have announced they will suspend internet data caps temporarily to ensure as many people as possible can stay connected. New #COVID19 announcement: @Sprint customers to get expanded roaming access on the T-Mobile network for next 60 days. [Merger Info: https://t.co/3PrNifc2Eq] #COVID19 info here ➡️ https://t.co/GugVQ8airp — Sprint News (@sprintnews) March 15, 2020 2. Media becomes a way of enriching day-to-day life. In China, youngsters use virtual gathering apps to kill the boredom. For example, the WanBa (玩吧) app offers several multi-player games for people to play on mobile, such as ‘Draw & Guess’ and ‘Online Roleplay’. This doesn’t only apply to entertainment, it spans across multiple areas such as education. As more and more countries order school closures, companies are striving to provide students, teachers and parents with solutions. For instance, Youtube offers resources to educators for distance learning and video tips for studying at home. 3. Isolation makes life more digital. In China again, the Gym industry is rethinking their model, moving to online live-streaming and short video platforms to reach people at home. Commerce As people turn to isolation, shopping goes online. 1. There is a surge in traffic to e-commerce sites. According to Comscore, retail total visits began a steady upwards climb in February. Evolution of Visits to top online retailers Evolution of Search for ‘online groceries’ in the United States 2. The online demand is so intense that pressure greatly increases on the operations side. Amazon is planning to hire 100,000 new workers to manage fulfilment. We see a lot of companies finding creative ways to build entirely new services for their clients. For instance, many restaurants and delivery services are adapting their operations to the new sanitary guidelines to continue servicing their clients. Postmates let customers choose how and where they want their food delivered. We also see many examples of companies showing their gratitude to medical personnel by offering them free food and other benefits: View this post on Instagram We’re so grateful for the hospital workers + medical personnel who are putting others before themselves during this critical time. In the midst of the current crisis, we’re dedicating our Outpost operations and teams to support those on the front lines by delivering free, fresh sg salads + bowls to hospitals in the cities we serve. Need an Outpost at your health facility? Head to bit.ly/sgimpactoutpost, fill out a quick form, and someone from our Outpost team will reach out to you. A post shared by sweetgreen (@sweetgreen) on Mar 16, 2020 at 1:57pm PDT 3. Footfall is severely decreasing for the travel, restauration, sports, offline entertainment and offline retail categories. Data from OpenTable shows how restaurants’ situation has been dramatically declining over the last days. Footfall will likely keep decreasing as more and more governments order stores closures and take confinement measures. Brands such as Apple have already closed most of their retail stores. Media Landscape In a similar way to commerce, uncertainty, confinement and working from home change how people consume media: 1. People consume more media all day and not only during prime time. In the United States, streaming could rise by 60% according to Nielsen, which base their analysis on data from previous confinement situations. 2. People are turning to TV & Digital for news. Many news publishers have removed their paywalls on all their articles about coronavirus to facilitate information. To prevent misinformation about COVID-19 and opportunistic usages, platforms such as Google have launched initiatives to drive users to trustful sources and block all ads capitalising on the coronavirus. 3. Radio usage is increasing as more people favour car over public transportation. This will likely fluctuate as more and more markets impose travel restrictions. 4. As sports competitions get cancelled across the world, TV viewership of sports events is falling, which is likely to hit networks hard, especially as 2020 is the year of major planned events such as the UEFA European Championship or the Tokyo Olympic Games. 5.Subscription VOD and Gaming (including streaming) is increasing. In that context, Netflix have quickly developed a browser extension for Chrome to help people connect while social distancing. 6. Media consumed outdoors and in public is decreasing/losing effect, especially OOH, cinema and sponsorships. While some studios decide to postpone movie releases (e.g., James Bond No Time to Die), others decide to take the online way. In China, the movie Lost in Russia was moved to ByteDance and other online video platforms, attracting 180M viewers in the first three days! The consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on our daily lives are becoming our new normal. In that new territory for us all, and despite the important financial challenges and business disruptions, we see many examples of companies stretching themselves for the common good, such as LVMH dedicating a part of their production chain to make hand sanitiser for French public authorities. It is clear that many aspects of what we are all experiencing as a society will have lasting effects beyond the pandemic. The massive working from home forced experiment will accelerate remote working. The infrastructure stress-test on supply chain and IT will be rich with learnings for online commerce. More people will be exposed to and experience digital services such as online groceries for the first time, and it is unlikely that they will all abandon these when confinements stop. All of this will push organisations to keep transforming themselves, to the benefit of their consumers and their employees. “No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.” – Hal Borland For more coverage about how COVI-19 is impacting the media landscape across the globe, listen to the special episode of The Human Element, the podcast by our friends at Carat: 07 min read
Google Ads 2020 Product & Feature Announcements: Online Sales
Google announced several key 2020 product announcements today - their third major unveil as part of the Google Marketing Live alternative: The Update. Today’s announcements were focused on Online Sales, and highlighted improvements across four broad products: responsive search ads, image extensions, Smart Shopping campaigns and responsive display ads. The product announcements give advertisers and users more details, visuals, and specs; providing more automated options to adapt in changing user behaviors. Adapting for Online Sales Overall, key online trends emerging from the current pandemic have catalyzed a shift in online opportunities. Consumers are open to buying from new and different brands. People are interested and willing to explore new options and research competitor brands, not just their tried and tested routines. Demand has also shifted – users are seeking different products and services. From an obvious rise in home goods, DIY, food delivery and comfort apparel, to smaller niche shifts iProspect advertisers have reported, like buying lip balm instead of lipstick. People are more comfortable with ecommerce purchasing than ever before. Across all ages, platforms and devices, purchasing online is now part of ‘the new normal’. Similarly, how users purchase goes further than the platform. Options like curbside pickup, scheduled pickup, appointment shopping, contactless payment and longer returns policies are major factors for people making online decisions. And as always, amongst all purchase decision-making factors, Google found brands that have immediate availability, strong reviews, renowned authority, in short supply and valuable, will be successful in driving online sales. Today’s updates aim to connect people with relevant brands in more dynamic and simple ways. The Update(s) 1. RSAs become more specific Responsive search ads (RSAs) have been extensively tested since their launch in 2018, but interestingly until now they have not incorporated many of the personalization options that traditional text ads provide. Now RSAs - Google’s automated text ad selector format - are becoming more specific with several new features to encourage advertiser adoption and user engagement. ‘Location Insertion’ will pull in location targeting and dynamically share the city, state or country in the ad copy. Currently in beta, this launches globally in July and has already proved successful with iProspect brands seeking to engage with people geographically. Similarly, ‘countdown customizers’ will become available in RSAs. These countdown timers are already commonly used to create urgency on promotional sales, so incorporating these into RSAs is another reason for brands to invest in the Google machine learning powered RSA ad formats. Alongside these major dynamic ad options, additional RSA features also aim to improve online engagement. Asset Suggestions including shipping offerings like curbside pickup, scheduled pickup, returns policy, and contactless delivery will communicate how potential customers can shop with businesses, and new reporting like Cross-campaign Asset Reporting will make reviewing more assets at once easier. Additionally, Ad strength Optiscore Recommendations will now be available in Google Ads, while Optiscore Recommendations to add new responsive search ads will soon be included in Google Ads Editor to help brands continually optimize. So, while RSA performance is gradually improving, these smarter automated capabilities equip advertisers with further options, and will make RSAs more competitive and widespread. This will encourage many brands to rethink their RSA usage and test new ways of appealing to users. 2. Image Extensions test a visual component Fifteen years ago, the search engine results page (SERP) was crammed with text links. Now, the SERP contains a wide variety of rich imagery, knowledge graphs, shopping or vertical specific ad options, and booking forms, which make standard text ads look comparatively archaic. With the official launch of ‘image extensions’ Google is now encouraging advertisers to add images to text ads (including RSA, ETAs) at the campaign or ad group level. This beta is already available and open to a number of advertisers in English, Spanish and Portuguese across most non-sensitive verticals, and once again will encourage engagement and user choice alongside text ads. Google is certainly trying to make this visual format option simple, with a 1x1 aspect ratio upload, and even a dynamic image extension option to dynamically decide the image from keyword or ad final URL. Ultimately, incorporating images into the SERP is nothing new and has been tested and ‘sunset’ various times in the past fifteen years. More recently, Google has been building rich, engaging ad types in Showcase Shopping, Automotive ads, lead form extensions and Discovery, so this is a welcome addition to core paid search. With another go at images in the SERP, Image Extensions are simpler than ever, but are they here to stay? While it makes sense for brands to dabble in this new product given the ease, success will depend on appropriate images appearing in line with searches, and the user accepting images as part of their usual Google ad search results. 3. Smart Shopping campaigns (SSC) expand their automated boundaries Retail brands now have more reasons to try automated, multi-platform Smart Shopping campaigns (SSC). Alongside Google search, shopping, display, YouTube and Gmail, SSC will soon open up to many more features. ‘More browsable and immersive shopping experiences’ will be included to unlock more browsing opportunities for retail brands, and videos on Google’s Display Network will soon be widely available to similarly encourage more engagements. Annotations sharing details of fast and free handling and shipping details directly from the Google Merchant Center will be available in the US across SSC and Standard Shopping campaigns, sharing more incentives for people to immediately buy across paid shopping listings. One interesting development to SSC is new customer acquisition bidding. This should not be overlooked and represents a major opportunity for brands focused on growth and expansion. This option allows advertisers to set a different bid towards new customers, by assigning a higher (or lower) value towards new customers while still optimizing toward online sales or store visits. This is not a campaign segmentation or audience list targeting option, but a way to rely on Google’s machine learning to skew visibility and investment towards new users. iProspect has been an early adopter of this format and found it crucial in brands hoping to grow their customer base and reduce investing in existing users. The technology behind this is through auto-detection (540-day lookback window algorithm determining behavior). However, you can improve new customer matching through a Custom List or by implementing a global site tag. Google also alluded to an app solution for Firebase through an SDK (see previous iProspect blog for other app-based Google announcements). For iProspect, expanding SSC into new areas and incorporating more details is a natural next step for the format. It is a clear sign that SSCs are working and Google continues to invest in them. New customer acquisition bidding is particularly interesting – while the means of determining a new customer may not be full proof, it highlights a crucial way for brands to change their strategy towards new customers. New customer acquisition could be expanded to other campaign types (search, discover, local, display) and across other platforms (SA360, DV360), and is an effortless way to lean into new customers. It should not be viewed as a secondary backup metric or a justification for poor ROI, but encourages a growth mindset and a major digital strategy rethink. Brands that are bold and make the business decision to move into new customer growth, will be the top movers in the next 18 months. 4. Responsive Display Ads become easier Alongside these search and shopping updates, responsive display ad options are improving. New layouts like smart cropping and background edits will be more readily available. For shopping, feed-based options will provide a new single product design or improved multi product layout for retailers. Both features give the algorithm more options to find the optimum arrangement and products for users to make online sale decisions. Even more interesting, Google is now making their auto-generated video product widely available for responsive display ads. These video ads are stitched together from existing campaign assets to create what Google describe as an ‘animated gif’, and once live will serve wherever video ads are eligible. Generally, responsive display ads have been available for some time, and are not widely used by major advertisers with creative teams and high spec image options. These enhancements are likely to compete with social formats like Facebook’s DPA and, like the initial (The) Update announcement aimed at more local businesses, this is for small to medium size advertisers who want to tweak existing assets and scale across Google’s display platform. Similarly, auto-generated video has been available for specific brands potentially trialing YouTube, so it is clear Google has invested in technology to make this more widely available. Easy and scalable, this may not be for many large brands, but it is a great option for smaller advertisers interested in more plug-and-play options. Overall, these Update(s) come at a crucial turning point in user behavior. As people have become more comfortable purchasing online, there are now dynamic ways advertisers can make online decisions more seamless. These four key product enhancements make it easy for brands to give people the aesthetics and information they don’t yet even realize they need, to make online purchases. 08 min read
The Latest Developments in Social Commerce
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