Omnicom Media Group MENA To Provide Complimentary Media Space To Charities
Omnicom Media Group MENA has decided to work together with regional media owners in the Middle East to provide complimentary media space to its long-standing partner charities. This initiative is a part of the company’s COVID-19 relief efforts. This noble act will help Dubai Cares, Gulf for Good, and Médecins Sans Frontières to reach out to a larger audience with their call to action. The COVID-19 campaigns are mainly aimed at education, health, and critical support for people especially children who are in need in the region and beyond.
The response from the media industry is astounding. The media partners currently include Backlite Media, Digital Tree, DMS, Elevision Screens, Eye Media, Future Tech, Group Plus, Maddict, MMP, Reach MENA, and Snap Inc. They have offered free media space to promote various charities and draw support for their causes. Omnicom Media Group MENA also provides creative support.
Omnicom Media Group MENA has shared a long-term relationship with these three non-profit organizations and supported their causes over the years. The latest initiative is a step to ensure to get the means for the mission of these charities towards the community continues when donations are down due to coronavirus crisis.
Mario Stephan, Executive Director MSF UAE said,
“This pandemic is like no other we’ve seen in modern times, impacting our patients, our staff, and our programs. Only together can we muster hope to get through it successfully.”
He further added,
“We’re very grateful for this initiative as it will help drum further support for our patients. It’s important we never lose sight of the less fortunate than ourselves, even now.”
Alanna Turpin, Sustainability Lead at Omnicom Media Group MENA added,
“Our industry has a very powerful talent that’s acutely needed right now. It’s the ability to raise awareness, rally and move people to achieve great things through collective action.”
In this crisis, it’s about saving people from illness and poverty. It’s urgent our charity partners get the resources they need to alleviate the suffering. Media owners with available advertising inventory they wish to commit to this effort can contact us at CSR-MENA@OmnicomMediaGroup.com”.
Verizon Media Expands DSP to Offer Premium Native Ad Inventory.
Verizon Media has announced the expansion of its demand-side platform bringing in premium, programmatic, and now its full native marketplace inventory, formats, targeting, and measurement into a single unit.
The DSP gives a unified solution to the advertisers to check on every aspect of their buys across all formats and inventory purchases- from planning, buying, and management to optimization.
Today, people are using more screens and devices than before. Therefore, it becomes challenging for advertisers to provide a personalized and unified experience across the media mix. This level of fragmentation eventually leads to using different tools for different formats and then measuring the success of each of them would be laborious. But now advertisers can have access to omnichannel inventories including mobile, digital out-of-home, CTV, video, and audio along with native advertising from a single dashboard.
According to Iván Markman, the chief business officer at Verizon Media,
The Verizon Media native [ad] experience was separate from the programmatic capabilities in our DSP…Now both are one, and this includes a lot more consistency [campaign] planning and measurement and attribution. Over the last few quarters, we’ve looked at bringing more transparency and insights to our DSP.
The expansion of DSP’s functionality provides exclusive access to native ad inventory from Verizon’s owned and operated properties like Tech Crunch, Yahoo, and Huffington Post. The robust native marketplace format and premium inventory along with the programmatic offering, supported by 1st party data will help advertisers navigate a cookie-less environment.
In an era when media agencies are on hiring freeze if not headcount cutbacks, it was essential for the company to improve the efficiency of the tools. Markman stated, “You can now do more with less.“He further added,
Sometimes you’d have seven different platforms for things like digital out of home and native then display. Many of our clients have unfortunately had to furlough some team members or lay off their workforces. This helps with performance.
Tik Tok Tests ‘Shop Now’ Button For Influencer Videos
TikTok, mostly considered as an entertainment platform is improving its advertising offerings and nascent Creator Marketplace that matches advertisers with vetted publishers and influencers. DigiDay reported that TikTok is testing a new ad format namely the ‘Shop Now’ button. This would link brands to the leading influencers allowing the creators to display the Call-To-Action button in their videos. The ad revenue will be divided between TikTok and influencers.
The revenue split ratio is not decided yet but DigiDay reported that the company is discussing 20/80 splits in Tik Tok’s favor. This model allows TikTok to tap into revenue that was previously shared between advertisers and influencers.
Can you shop on TikTok?
The Shop Now option influences the user to shop the product right away is one way of having both – performance and direct response ad products. The creator CTA feature is still in the early testing stage and is available to only select advertisers and agencies.
As quoted by DigiDay, a TikTok spokeswoman,
“We are constantly experimenting with ideas and features to improve the app experience for our users. TikTok is a platform for creative expression and a big part of that is showing and sharing the things you love with others. We’re in the early stages of testing a way users can add links to products to their videos and will share more updates when we have them.”
Earlier this month we witnessed Levi’s was among the first brands to partner with Tik Tok’s influencers and trial the Shop Now’ program. It partnered with the influencers to promote its “Future Finish” customizable denim technology on the platform.
Levi’s reported the product views doubled on the ‘Future Finish’ page that featured in the campaign. All advertisers can access to ‘Shop Now’ button to help drive traffic to their websites but is different from the CTA Beta test said TikTok spokesperson to DigiDay.
Is TikTok following the YouTube way?
TikTok has increased its focus on Creators and for this, it had launched Creators Marketplace late last year. The Creators marketplace helps advertisers to filter out the platform’s top creators.
It appears that TikTok is moving towards YouTube Creator shared revenue model than the Instagram model. Amy Luca, chief executive at influencer marketing company TheAmplify said,
One of the things that Instagram struggles with is retrofitting some of their programs to pull out money from the gray market ecosystem that is being earned by influencers and paid by brands on their platform.”
Growing users of the social video app
TikTok has been growing rapidly over the past year and has been on a tear since the lockdown. Data company Apptopia estimates TikTok was the second top free app on iOs and Google Play stores in the U.S. on April 28. It is also estimated to have 328 monthly active users and was downloaded 100 million times worldwide between Mar 20 through April 28.
Jude Rajanathan, a global director at media agency Zenith stated that TikTok will work on improving its CTA buttons to push for more performances and direct-response ads.
Facebook Post Strong Earnings in Q1’20, Exceeds Analysts Projections
Its earnings season and Facebook has some relatively good news on that for the investors. It has impressively beaten Wall Street expectations on revenue and earning per share (EPS). Facebook ad revenue grew by 17% Y-o-Y despite the instability in the digital ad market due to COVID-19.
Why does it matter?
Interestingly, Facebook was able to beat top and bottom-line revenue expectations amid the coronavirus crisis showing how its business is strong and growing. However, the company didn’t provide specific revenue guidance for Q2 due to the ongoing uncertainty but offered a snapshot on the revenues of upcoming quarters.
- Meanwhile, Facebook said that the current rise in engagement will continue but the usage will come down once the stay-at-home orders are lifted.
- The digital advertising industry has taken a hard hit due to shelter-at-home orders globally. Facebook said in a statement, “We experienced a significant reduction in the demand for advertising, as well as a related decline in the pricing of our ads, over the last three weeks of the first quarter of 2020.”
Let’s talk numbers
- Earning per share (EPS): $1.71 vs. $1.75 per share forecast by Refinitiv
- Revenue: $17.74 billion vs. $17.41 billion forecast by Refinitiv
- Daily active users (DAUs): 1.73 billion
Image Credit: Facebook
- Monthly active users (MAUs): 2.6 billion
- Family Monthly Active people (MAP): 2.99 billion monthly users across its family of apps. This metric helps to measure Facebook’s total user base across its main app, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp.
- The average revenue per user (ARPU): $6.95
- Other revenue: $297 million which is driven by sales of VR headset ‘Oculus.’
- Cash and cash equivalents: $60.29 billion
What lies ahead?
- Facebook is the third internet company that posted strong Q1 results after Snapchat and Google despite the hindrances in the digital ad market. This shows big internet companies will keep dominating the advertising ecosystem due to the pandemic.
- CCS Insight chief operating officer Martin Garner believes the impact of the virus will lead companies to use digital services from advertising to collaboration.
“………..Although Google and Facebook will take a hit from Covid-19, we expect them to be leading indicators of recovery, as digital advertising and other services show early growth in economies getting back to normal.”
Google Cuts Marketing Budgets by 50%, Freezes Hiring.
Key Points
- Budget cuts and hiring freezes across marketing and across Google.
- An internal document reveals Google is cutting its marketing budgets by as much as 50 % for the second half of 2020.
- The marketing budget cuts may be a way to combat reduced advertising earnings in the wake of coronavirus.
- The development comes in less than a week from where Google is scheduled to discuss Q1 2020 results on 28th April.
Google is doing what other big tech companies are or will be doing soon to mitigate the coronavirus impact – cutting marketing budgets. An email viewed by CNBC, sent to the marketing employees this week was about budget cuts and a new hiring freeze for full-time and contract employees.
The e-mail stated:
There are budget cuts and hiring freezes happening across marketing and across Google…We, along with the rest of marketing, have been asked to cut our budget by about half for H2.
In 2019, Google spent $18.46 bn which includes employee compensation. One important area that required advertising was Cloud, as it competes with Amazon and Microsoft by hiring more sales representatives.it is unclear how such areas will be affected that need wide consumer reach.
However, Google confirmed that some areas’ budgets are being cut but not every area will be impacted as it adjusts plans.
A company spokesperson said in an emailed statement to CNBC,
As we outlined last week, we are re-evaluating the pace of our investment plans for the remainder of 2020 and will focus on a select number of important marketing efforts….We continue to have a robust marketing budget, particularly in digital, in many business areas.
Sundar Pichai, CEO in his memo last week stated,
The clear lesson from 2008 is that preparing early is key to weathering the storm and emerging in a position to continue long-term growth…We are reevaluating the pace of our investment plans for the remainder of 2020. That starts with taking a more critical look at the pace of hiring for the rest of the year.
…we continue to invest, but will be recalibrating the focus and pace of our investments in areas like data centers and machines, and non-business essential marketing and travel.
Sundar’s announcement emphasized that the company will not cut back in areas where consumers needed Google’s support for their growth and success. It will also continue with digital advertising which is in line with the stay at home audience.
Travel advertising earnings plummets:
Recently, a search marketer who knows travel advertising well tweeted the collapse of travel-related advertising and one of the contributing factors to a negative impact on the earnings.
When nearly 10% of your business is as a performance marketing supplier to Expedia and Priceline, and they stop advertising, the knock on effects are strong: https://t.co/TKNFl3YgOs
— Martin MacDonald 🐊 (@searchmartin) April 23, 2020
Following the news, Google shares had dropped nearly 2%.
Facebook Rolls Out Video Chat Messenger Rooms To Beat Zoom And The Likes
- Facebook announced 50-person video chat rooms called Messenger rooms.
- Regardless of whether participants have a Facebook account, they can participate in the calls.
- Messenger Rooms are an answer to Zoom and Houseparty for Pandemic.
- Messenger Rooms will roll out this week in a few countries and the rest of the world next week including the U.S.
Video calling services have seen a sharp rise during the coronavirus crisis and the use of video calling on Facebook Messenger has doubled in the coronavirus affected areas. On Friday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg delivered a live stream to announce the company’s retooled video products for users to connect while at home under quarantine. The video update perfectly fits Facebook advertising plans that focus on e-commerce.
As many countries issued stay-at-home orders, rival apps Zoom witnessed a drastic growth in the active users to 300 million in April, and Houseparty, owned by Fortnite-maker Epic Games, was downloaded more than 2 million times in the start of March. Facebook has seen the success of Zoom, the video conferencing sites popular among the companies that have sent employees to work-from-home. The biggest product launch ‘Rooms’ will be created via Facebook Messenger which allows 50 people to hang out at a time. The company plans to add the feature to Instagram, Whatsapp and it’s portal-video calling devices soon.
Key features of Messenger Rooms:
- People will be able to keep their room private, block unwanted participants, and invite people who are not on Facebook.
- Participants can use AR filters and change the background real-time
- Discoverable rooms will be listed at the top of the feed.
However, messenger rooms are not end-to-end encrypted like Group Facetime or WhatsApp call. Stan Chudnovsky, VP of Messenger said on the blog,
Room calls are not end-to-end encrypted, but Facebook says it does not view or listen to calls. The creator of a room can remove participants at any time, and rooms where illicit behavior is taking place can be reported to Facebook. (WhatsApp video calls are end-to-end encrypted, offering an extra layer of protection to users.)
Summary of Other Updates from Facebook
- WhatsApp will accommodate from four to eight participants in the video group calls making it a suitable competitor to Zoom.
- Facebook Live and IGTV: Facebook is creating advertising that fits in this environment especially in the areas that are popular among consumers like home cooking, fitness, and others. It will be open for business and more e-commerce activities will take place. 800 million people watch live streaming on Facebook and Instagram.
- Donate Button on Live videos: This helps musicians, artists, people, and activists can raise funds for causes during the coronavirus outbreak.
- Live via Audio only: with more musicians doing live concerts on Facebook Live, you can listen in case you cannot watch it or want to save on data.
- Instagram Live On Web: You can watch live videos related to any activity or product from the desktop.
- Portal Live: One of Facebook’s hardware projects that have seen a slow adoption but with the COVID-19 crisis the sales increased tenfold. You can go to Live to the pages and Groups devices from Portal devices and can also create interactive content for customers and communities.
- Facebook Dating Video Chat: It is in the nascent dating service. Facebook dating is a virtual meet up and does a video chat with matches on Facebook first.
Facebook is going to report quarterly earnings next week and it has already said that the revenue has been negatively affected due to the coronavirus crisis as advertisers have pulled back on spending and online ad auction prices have been reduced. According to eMarketer Facebook ads and the amount it earns from each unit sold has decreased by nearly 50% in some categories.
Debra Aho Williamson, principal analyst at eMarketer, in her note said,
“Those losses will be made up for by gains in categories that increased their use of Facebook advertising at the end of March, either to market products or services aimed at people staying at home, or to take advantage of drastically lower ad costs.”
Snap’s Q1 2020 Report: Users and Revenue Increases, Ad Spend Declines
Snap Inc. the parent company of the popular social media platform Snapchat reported in its Q1 2020 earnings – strong gains in both users and revenues but a dip in advertiser spend despite the growing concerns about the coronavirus pandemic.
No Coronavirus Negative Impact on Earnings-Yet
The stock was up nearly 20 percent after the company reported a 44 percent (Y-o-Y) increase in its first-quarter revenue to $462 million. That was a far better performance than expected. The ad spend growth grew 58% in January and February, and fell to roughly 25% in March (when the pandemic grew rapidly), the gains from the first two months helping to end the quarter positively.
CFO Derek Andersen said during Snap’s earnings call,
“The economic environment has become challenging for many of our advertising partners.”
The company didn’t provide guidance for Q2 citing uncertainty related to the worldwide economic crisis but in an unusual step, provided revenue growth figures for the first week of April. The advertiser mix on Snapchat contributed to the Q1 performance and continues to help in Q2. Snapchat has a few small business advertisers unlike Facebook and Instagram, however many large advertisers are ready to commit on a regular basis.
Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel said in a statement,
“We are grateful for the opportunity to serve our community and partners during this difficult time.” He added, “Snapchat is helping people stay close to their friends and family while they are separated physically, and I am proud of our team for overcoming the many challenges of working from home during this time while we continue to grow our business and support those who are impacted by COVID-19.”
Strong User Growth and increase in Engagement
Snapchat’s daily active user (DAV) base reached 229 million in the first quarter across all regions and on Android and iOS.This represents a 20 percent increase from last year.
There is some concern over the divergence of Snapchat’s users’ growth. Snapchat added 2 million more users in North America- the most lucrative market but the majority of the growth was from the ‘Rest of the World’ category. Snapchat has witnessed significant growth in the Indian market since it revamped its Android app, a key contributor to the ‘Rest of the World’ category.
However, the key area of opportunity that Snap would prefer to boost growth in the US as it will get more 3.5x more revenue per user.
Besides, the time spent on Snapchat has increased due to coronavirus. CEO Evan Spiegel reported that the average time spent in the last week of March vs. the last week of January was up more than 20%. On the other hand, markets like the U.K, France saw more than a 30% increase.
Mobile app tracker App Annie’s findings point out 54% growth in average time spent per user on Snapchat in South Korea from March1-14,2020, compared with Q4 2019. Italy marked a 36% increase and Japan was up 23%.
Additionally, this pandemic increased communication with friends and family on Snapchat, up more than 30% in the last week of march compared to the last week of January whereas in some other geographies there was an increase of more than 50%.
Games, TV, Chat, Calling are other highlighting points of group engagement.
Snapchatters watching Snap’s premium content hub ‘ Discover’ grew 35% Y-o-Y in Q1 2020 which represents the total time spent watching shows more than doubling this quarter. The company also mentioned hiring Hulu senior vice president of advertising sales Peter Naylor.
Chief business officer Jeremi Gorman said,
“As TV budgets migrate to digital, they move to places that carry the same advantages of linear, and we’ve been investing in those things for years. Peter is just the most recent investment in the strategy.”
Snap has also launched App Stories -brings its popular stories feature to the app. It also launched five new Snap games globally. With the use of videoconferencing and live streaming to connect with friends and family, Snap has seen more than 30 times increase in the daily download of Snap camera, a desktop app that allows people to add lenses to whichever video service they use. Besides, it added more than 120 partner app integration with its Snap Kit, and the numbers of Snapchatters using on a monthly basis is up 75% from the Q4 of 2019.
Direct-Response advertising budgets make up half of the revenues.
Snap continues to double down on direct response advertisers especially in games, home entertainment, CPG, and eCommerce. Direct response advertising now accounts for more than half of Snap’s revenue.
Speigel noted,
“In the short-term, we’re shifting sales resources and pulling forward some investments in direct response to better serve the advertisers who are trying to reach our audience during this time. For example, we can help movie studios pivot to digital releases by supporting them with a suite of products designed to track titles over a dynamic and flexible release window. We’ve also seen many large brands doing a lot of important things to help their community and the broader world, and we’re helping these brands communicate their efforts to our audience in a thoughtful and approachable way that inspires others to make a positive impact.”
Snapchat recently worked with Universal on the promotion of the animated film ‘Trolls World Tour’ released digitally incorporating Trolls AR masks into Snap Camera add-on a feature that gained significant momentum as more people work from home.
Snap has worked immensely hard over the past few years to build out measurement capabilities and ad products to interest the direct advertisers resulting in nearly double total ad revenues in two years.
So what has Snap done to get this?
Snap introduced conversion-optimized bidding- which allows advertisers to optimize toward their sales or app install gaols, conversion-tracking advertising pixels, and improved ad-targeting capabilities. This has attracted performance advertisers who already buy those types from other platforms.
Snap has focused on offering unique ad products like augmented reality platforms and easy self serve ad platform.
Chief business officer Jeremi Gorman said,
“Advertisers are looking for a way to make a dollar go further. “We have efficient pricing, and we’re a great place to come to get ROAS for the audience they’re looking for.”
There is also something for Snap’s brand advertisers. The company has doubled the amount of money committed via upfronts in 2020 vs. 2019. Snap is using its creative services to help brands distribute their PSAs related to COVID-19, like the filter from Adidas encouraging people across the United Kingdom and Germany to stay at home that was viewed more than 14 million times.
Snap has a lot of potential and capacity to reach a young audience. Although things look gloomy for the remaining year of 2020, Snap appears more stable and an attractive platform for advertisers and partners. If Snap manages to expand its market appeal geographically, it will be well-positioned beyond COVID-19.
Project Agora Co-founds the New EMEA Video Advertising Platform- Union
Union, the joint venture of five leading technology providers has now launched a new video advertising platform in London for Europe, Middle East and Africa(EMEA) to help local content providers access to video ad spend from global brands who want to support local media at a time when trusted content is the need of the hour for their readers. At the same time, it enables international advertisers to activate video campaigns on the sites that really matter to their local audiences.
Union empowers local publishers to cater to the premium inventory demand by global brands. With a total of over 300employees located in 34 cities, Union and its founding members – regional technology providers PlayAD, Project Agora, ShowHeroes, Video Intelligence and Viralize enjoy strategic relationships with thousands of local market websites across EMEA region providing video content, monetization and technology to publishers.
This strategic partnership helps Union bring a blend of pre-roll and out-stream video formats to the market for advertisers to target. This is achieved using a powerful combination of programmatic and contextual targeting to reach nearly 300 million users on relevant, brand safe and trusted publishers. Union’s publisher partners involve global brands like Marie Claire, Elle, Vanity Fair, and CNN, as well as leading local publishers such as Aller Media, Axel Springer, Stryia, Libero and Funke Media Group.
Steven Filler has been announced as Managing Director for Union and will lead the launch across EMEA focusing on London, Paris and Amsterdam agency buying hubs.
With 20+ years of experience in the digital industry, Filler has held major commercial roles across a range of leading companies including The Guardian, AOL, and upon his appointment, he said:
“The current global crisis has highlighted the continued importance of local quality media in providing the truth and guidance to readers, so that they can be informed citizens. At the same time, advertisers demand more quality, brand safe video inventory and Union makes this possible through a single-entry point while also allowing brands to support the publishers that really matter to their local audiences.”
Odysseas Ntotsikas, founder of Project Agora, said:
“The launch of the Union is further reinforcing and expanding the reach of Project Agora’s mission to Keep the Open Web Open. Local Publishers so far unable to attract advertising budgets from international advertisers and trading desks can now see an uplift in such revenues by working with Project Agora, Union’s founding partner in Central, SE Europe and MEA. For local advertisers looking to advertise out of their home market there is now a unique opportunity to see their brand in the top local sites of every European market that people trust for their news and entertainment”.
11 Global Brands Create Epic Ads Entirely From Home During Covid-19.
Just weeks into global lockdown, advertising production has changed. It is now confined to homes with shoots canceled or postponed for the foreseeable future. Out of adversity, now comes creativity as advertisers are overcoming the hurdle of not being able to venture out with ads made remotely or entirely from home.
Video advertising isn’t stopped amidst the pandemic but is showcasing creativity in lockdown.
We have handpicked the best ads produced remotely in the COVID- era from around the world.
1. Apple: Creativity goes on
Apple is one of the top names of all brands creating ads from home. The tech giant has captured how consumers are creative amid the COVID outbreak and are using its products for drawing pictures on the iPad, produce video content on Macbook or Facetime with near ones. The film is produced in over two weeks starring many celebrities from their homes and ends with a line reading “Creativity Goes On.”
2. Women’s Aid: The Lockdown by Engine
Engine and Knucklehead created a campaign ‘The Lockdown’ – uses video shot during the daily excursions in London to capture the empty roads and emphasize that domestic abusers are no longer on the streets and are locked inside with their families. Women’s aid has set up a coronavirus advice page to help victims of domestic abuse.
3. IKEA: Making Home Count
An absolute delight to watch the video advertisement and beautiful creative ad in coronavirus outbreak. Ikea Singapore released ‘Making Home Content’ – a short ad made remotely by a team of creatives from TBWA to give thanks to those abiding the lockdown rules. It covers simple ‘joys’ like pets, cooking, and playtime with children and family, using the footage shot by the team who captured their lockdown lives.
4. Vodafone Italy: Importance of Connectivity
Vodafone Italy launched an ad campaign made remotely by the crew to demonstrate the importance of connectivity and raise funds for the Italian Red Cross during the pandemic. The ad features the strapline “Even when we can’t be close, we can be together”.
5.Honda Civic: #StayHome
The 35-second spot is the latest video ad made from home entirely for the Dubai region with Memac Ogilvy Dubai. A classic example of creative video advertising where it started like any other sheet metal commercial but with a twist. Honda uses a full-scale miniature car and the camera shots managed to trick the viewers for some time and feel like watching a real car. The ad ended on a hopeful note reading” Until we drive again” with the hashtag #Stayhome.
6.Porsche: Let it Not Tempt you
Another automobile ads made remotely is Porsche for Poland which created a film overnight with a series of graphics to encourage viewers to stay home despite the beautiful weather. It inspires Porsche owners to share photos of the parked cars on social media and comply with safety recommendations.
7.Nike: Play for the World
Next on ads made remotely is Nike’s inspiring campaign where it is paying a tribute to all the athletes who are training indoors due to quarantine.
8. Birds Eye: So, What’s For Tea?
This creative video advertising ad was made to help families cope with the coronavirus crisis presenting life hacks like entertaining families that include coloring pages and word searches. Families can download the life hacks on the brand’s website or social media page.
9.Ad Council: #StayHome, Save Lives
The Ad Council has joined hands with Google, the ANA, and other advertising, media, marketing trade associations, on a wide movement that pleads to the people of America to #StayHome Save Lives in order to slow the spread of coronavirus.
10. The BMW: Contactless Experience
The highly affected sector due to these unprecedented times is automotive. A unique and creative corona ad introduces the BMW India Contactless experience with a digital-purchase experience that gives the feel and benefits of a brick and mortar dealership at a click of a button and from the comfort of the home.
11. Audi: The Drive
Audi is offering a pleasant and innovative experience to house-bound Australians through the freedom of open roads. Audi Australia created a 4 hour long long-slow TV film, a masterpiece of creativity in lockdown for the viewers to experience the soothing nature of the road trip from the comfort of their home.
The creative ads in coronavirus pandemic show that it has not put a damper on the creativity of the people and will inspire audiences to StayHome, StaySafe to win over these tough times.
IAB GCC Report: Ramadan Budgets Shift Towards Performance based Ad Spends
Advertisers are changing their digital ad spend due to the ongoing coronavirus crisis affecting the businesses and the economy. The Dubai based Interactive Agency Bureau(IAB) that empowers GCC based media and marketing industries surveyed the marketing teams of nearly 30 Agencies and Clients between April 6 to April 12, 2020, for the impact of COVID-19 on Advertising.
Here are some main points from the report:
The findings suggest a huge downturn with 48% of respondents expect less than 30% of budget cuts in April and 41% of respondents see a decline in ad-spending or paused post-June.
With the Holy month of Ramadan expected to begin within weeks, there are still 34% of respondents who are yet to take decisions on Ramadan budgets while 51% are unsure about the directions of second-half budgets in this unprecedented period. This suggests that the majority of marketers are in ‘wait-and-see’ mode.
The report also states that 59% of respondents are suggesting that they will significantly increase the ‘Performance-based’ ad spend. This indicates marketers are in favour of Performance media in the second half.
Even though advertisers might be working on leaner budgets but are opportunistic to see 17% growth in Digital display in the second half. They also expect a rise in the audience and programmatic buying.
Lastly, 77% of respondents see COVID-19 will have a significant impact on the MENA advertising market than the 08/09 financial crisis.
Take a look at the pictorial images of findings and methodology from the report.
There is a wave of optimism about the second half right now and are looking ahead of a post-pandemic world whenever it is possible. Definitely, there is a pendulum swing in the minds of advertisers whether to decrease ad spend or pause it entirely to what we hope for a clear picture very soon.