One of the major themes to emerge from the pandemic has been the growing divide between the haves and have-nots. Some trends that have deepened the divide—such as the shift to ecommerce—are hardly new. But others will be short-lived trends that none of us could have predicted at the beginning of 2020. It remains to be seen when things will return to normal, but one thing is for certain: New habits formed in 2020 have altered the future of retail.
eMarketer senior analyst Bill Fisher and principal analyst at Insider Intelligence Karin von Abrams discuss what they're paying attention to in 2021 and why: How Brexit will impact online shopping, Amazon's European rivals, and new EU tech regulations.
Travel: The number of US adults traveling for the holidays will drop 29% this year, with air travel seeing much worse declines than car travel.
The unprecedented social and economic disruptions that affected all areas of life in the US in 2020 also skewed many of our pre-pandemic forecasts. Valuable insights can be gleaned by examining the difference between what we thought would happen as of February 2020 versus what we now project for this year and the coming years.
In 2021, the biggest US beneficiary of the streaming bonanza will be Disney. After a plethora of streaming competitors launched in 2020, Netflix still added a substantial number of subscribers. Equally as impressive as Netflix’s sustained dominance was Disney+’s ability to quickly gain viewers. These developments show there’s room for multiple services to thrive in this fast-growing market.
November marked the highest ad spend growth for 2020 yet, with digital shining particularly brightly—in line with expectations of an end-of-year rebound.
A seemingly growing percentage of CTV advertising is fraudulent, but how big the issue actually is has the industry divided.
This was a big year for antitrust, which saw four suits filed against Google and Facebook—with more likely to come. We recap the year with a timeline and discuss what 2021 could bring.