Q1 2020 Quarterly Trends Report

With 2019 being the first year where online budgets eclipsed traditional ad spending, 2020 was poised to be a breakout year for Search, Social, and Ecommerce advertising.

Of course, things didn’t go as planned—and many marketers are still trying to understand the extent to which the global health pandemic has impacted these core digital channels.

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Q1 2020 Quarterly Trends Report

Key Takeaways

COVID-19 clearly had an impact on the quarter, but year-over-year spending still grew across all channels through the end of March. Search, social, and ecommerce advertising were all poised to have a return to mid-2019 form before the pandemic. Within this report, you will see our growth projection on how these channels would have likely performed without the disruption.

Since the initial impact on digital ad budgets, weekly spending has stabilized across advertising channels, and recovery will vary by industry category. See how Q2 is shaping up based on the most recent advertising performance data and if there are signs of recovery across channels.

With paid search commanding the lion’s share of digital budgets, the significance of this channel to brands is abundantly clear.

Consumers influenced by brand messaging at any stage of the funnel turn to search engines as one of the primary methods to research purchase decisions, making paid search advertising uniquely valuable in the media mix.

In this report, learn quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year digital advertising campaign performance trends from Q1 2020, including:

Key performance indicators for the first quarter of 2020 across Search, Social, and Ecommerce advertising
The impact of the COVID-19 on overall digital advertising trends
A drill-down into the current state and near-term outlook of key industry categories affected by the global health crisis