The pandemic has accelerated ecommerce growth in the US this year, with online sales reaching a level not previously expected until 2022. In our Q3 US retail forecast, the top 10 retailers by ecommerce sales will tighten their grip on the retail market.

The healthcare and pharma industry is one of the only US industries to significantly increase its digital ad spend this year.

Amazon Prime Day 2020 will be unlike any other since its debut five years ago. Amid the backdrop of a pandemic and recessionary headwinds, this year’s event promises significant changes that will shake up the entire retail landscape heading into the holidays.

eMarketer principal analyst Mark Dolliver, junior analyst Blake Droesch and vice president of content studio at Insider Intelligence Paul Verna discuss how negative emotions are received in ads, whether we're witnessing the beginning of the end of the Upfronts, if paying with your hands is a good idea, the significance of LinkedIn Stories, if parents are actually influencers, what the Boston Celtics and Twitter have in common, and more.

The healthcare and pharma industry has been slower to embrace digital marketing compared with other verticals we track. Heavy regulation makes ad targeting more difficult, which has kept traditional media buys and in-person marketing popular.

eMarketer senior forecasting analyst Peter Newman and junior analyst at Insider Intelligence Blake Droesch discuss how the pandemic affected Americans' social networking behavior and where the major platforms now rank. Then, Blake talks about Facebook allowing cross platform messaging between Messenger and Instagram, shopping on Reels and IGTV, and a Delta Air Lines social media post.

The retail industry will continue to lead the pack in terms of digital ad spend in 2020, and the lockdown has helped retail solidify its position. This year, UK digital ad spending in the retail sector will reach £3.02 billion ($3.85 billion).

In terms of the allocations of spend across industries, 2020 will be a story of two trends. On one hand, digital ad investments (and advertising investments overall, for that matter) in some sectors will decline immensely as a result of those industries facing insurmountable barriers. On the other, the pandemic will allow certain other industries to remain resilient in terms of digital spend, with relatively strong growth forecasts for the year. It comes as no surprise that the automotive and travel industries will experience huge spending declines in 2020. As the UK imposed strict lockdown rules, pretty much all travel was nixed for several months. Investment in digital advertising by these two industries will thus suffer, with spend declining by 20.4% for auto and by 36.7% for travel this year.

We expect the number of US pay TV households to decline by 7.5% to 77.6 million this year.

Yes, it's really happening: The cookie-less future is on the way. Allison Schiff, senior editor at AdExchanger, joins eMarketer principal analyst at Insider Intelligence Nicole Perrin to discuss what's been going on at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), what advertisers need to know about FLoCs of birds, and how optimistic they are about educating consumers about targeted advertising.

Addressable advertising relies on being able to identify users to serve them the right message at the right time. But the identifiers that marketers use to do this are coming under threat as platforms and regulators work to improve data privacy and protection practices for consumers—namely by killing the third-party tracking cookie.

As Gen Z consumers enter the workforce and earn more disposable income, we expect this group to adopt new technology, including the most recent smart wearable devices.

Instagram has rolled out Instagram Shopping for its long-form video platform IGTV, part of the company's push to make social commerce more central to the app.

The pandemic has had all kinds of effects on consumers, and in turn, on how they interact with products and services. eMarketer principal analyst at Insider Intelligence Nicole Perrin speaks with fellow principal analyst Andrew Lipsman and forecasting analyst Eric Haggstrom about what happens when business metrics go haywire, including at Walmart, Nike, and Peloton. They also talk about Facebook's narrowing attribution window, Prime Day finally happening, and Samsung Ads' new self-serve demand-side platform option.