
Impact of Covid-19 on brands’ digital ad spend: Top sectors revealed
Consumer electronics, sporting and consumer goods saw an uptick in digital ad spend towards the end of 2020, while hospitality, entertainment, travel, leisure & tourism reduced spending as the long-term effects of the Covid-19 pandemic are felt across many industries.

Publisher IDG adopts LiveRamp’s authenticated traffic solution
Media technology company IDG has selected LiveRamp as its trusted partner to connect premium authenticated inventory with advertiser demand.

75% of senior marketers say creativity is being restricted by their leadership teams
The vast majority (75%) of senior marketing decision makers feel restricted in their creative endeavours by boardroom executives.

7 in 10 Brits ‘prefer streaming services to broadcast TV’
Over half of Brits (55%) would choose streaming services versus broadcast linear TV (45%) if they could keep only one, according to new research.

Renault launches two global campaigns to promote ZOE electric car
Renault and Publicis Conseil has produced two different global campaigns to promote its ZOE electric car.

Kantar boosts frequency of consumer survey to respond to market need
Kantar has announced its Great Britain TGI consumer survey is moving to a monthly data release to meet demand from media agencies, brands and media owners for faster but also in-depth insight into consumer behaviour during the pandemic.

SXSW 2021 goes virtual with AI-powered event platform Swapcard
SXSW Online is taking its 2021 event virtual and has chosen Swapcard, the leading AI-powered engagement and matchmaking platform for premium events, as the official event platform.

Online shopping ‘stopped Covid-19 from stealing Christmas 2020’
People opted to save instead of spend over key ‘peak’ retail moments in 2020, and 61% of consumers said that their Christmas celebrations would have been impossible without online shopping, according to new research.

Cool or creepy? MyHeritage offers deepfake tool to reanimate dead
Genealogy service MyHeritage has launched a Deep Nostalgia” feature to bring the past to life, make it appear as though individuals in old photos are looking around, blinking, and even smiling.

More Brits see household income decline during winter lockdowns
Over one third of British consumers (35%) faced a decline in household income, up from 29% in September, according to new research.

Almost a quarter of UK shoppers use social commerce: rapid growth is driven by UGC
Almost a quarter (23%) of UK shoppers are now using social media to discover new products, making it apparent that social commerce, rich visual content and virtual storefronts are the future of any ecommerce strategy.

COVID-19’s impact on gaming: Weekday sessions overtake weekends
Gamers are now playing more games during the weekdays throughout all of 2020, with the difference between weekday and weekend gaming increased by 52%, in weekday gaming’s favour, according to new research.

Top 25 global retailers: Amazon No.1 with $1.63tn market cap
Covid-19 reshaped the landscape for many industries and e-commerce sites benefitted from the sudden influx in e-commerce activity.

‘Shoppertainment’ is the next frontier of ecommerce in Europe
A majority (70%) of surveyed consumers expressed interest in “Shoppertainment” and almost half of those surveyed have increased their consumption of shoppertainment content as a result of COVID-19.

Australia passes new law which forces Google and Facebook to pay for news content
Australian parliament has passed a new media law that obligates Facebook and Google to pay for news content

UK marketers ‘one of least impacted by Covid’ with spend due to rocket
The majority of marketers suffered lost revenue due to Covid-19 last year, but the UK was one of the least impacted countries in terms of ‘big declines’ in revenue, according to a new study by Criteo, the advertising platform for trusted and impactful advertising.

Facebook launches shopping tool in the UK and Canada
Facebook has expanded its ecommerce features with a new ‘Shop’ bookmark that gives users in the UK and Canada the ability to browse virtual storefronts.

TikTok user spending ‘shot up nearly 400% in January 2021 to $128m’
Despite having a bleak outlook in 2020, TikTok ended the year on a high note and has embarked on an upward trajectory in 2021.

Organic search ecommerce trends: Target and Home Depot see biggest in Google search visibility during pandemic
Target and Home Depot are the only traditional brick-and-mortar retailers whose online retail stores rank among the 10 eCommerce sites found to have made the biggest gains in Google.com (US) search performance¹ during the Covid-19 era so far.

Pandemic ‘pushing organisations towards a more data-driven approach’
84% of businesses have seen more demand for data due to Covid-19, but nearly a third say data quality remains a fundamental barrier, according to a new study.

Vanish highlights clothes waste with London Fashion Week photoshoot
Washing brand Vanish has launched Rewear Edit, a fashion shoot created entirely from clothing waste. Featuring recycled looks curated by renowned stylist Miranda Almond, against a backdrop of 3.5 tonnes of clothing waste – the same amount discarded every five minutes in the UK.

Persil and Sky Nature launch Changemakers’ series
Sky Nature and Persil have launched their new ‘Changemakers’ short film series, which aims to inspire young people to take action on the social and environmental issues they care about, fronted by Ashley Banjo.

InMobi and Anzu partner for programmatic in-game advertising for brands
Gaming, with its audience of over 3.1 billion gamers and revenues approaching $175 billion, is becoming an attractive media channel as the industry grows at an exponential rate. Anzu’s technology blends real-world ads in IAB-recognized standards into video games...

Facebook restores Australia news after government amends licensing law
Facebook is to restore news to Australian pages on its platform after the government agreed to change its landmark media bargaining code that would force the social network and Google to pay for displaying news content.

Spotify to expand to 80 more markets worldwide
Spotify is launching in 85 new markets, including areas in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, reaching a further billion people.

WhatsApp to cut off messages for all who reject new data terms
WhatsApp is making a second attempt to get its users to accept an updated privacy policy after the initial effort in January sent many people to rival messaging apps.

Interview with Joshua Schachter: the man who invented bookmarking and hashtags
Joshua Schachter, founder of the phenomenon, Delicious, speaks to Aaron Dinin about how he came up both social bookmarking and hashtags mainly by accident, and how he managed to sell his company to Yahoo! after just eight months in the business.

Race to the bottom on media pricing ‘is over at most advertisers’
There has been a dramatic shift in terms of attitudes to quality media at most advertisers, indicating that decades of focus on pure price has transformed not just in marketing but procurement as well, according to new data.