Travel ad dollars fly higher
Younger flyers are looking for extras: Spirit Airlines has revamped its loyalty program to reward consumers for more than distance accrued, and they’re not alone in looking to expand its rewards to attract younger frequent flyers.
eMarketer senior analyst at Insider Intelligence Jasmine Enberg discusses when travel (and travel advertising) will recover and some good and not-so-good examples of how travel advertisers are running campaigns. She then talks about whether Twitter can make a space for healthy conversations, our expectations for WhatsApp, and the significance of social platforms ending the year looking more alike than ever.
Travelers are feeling optimistic about 2021: Though sentiment varies by country. Still, across all countries, people feel better as the year progresses—by Q3, the majority said they were likely to travel.
Airline ad spend dips again—what little recovery was seen pre-holidays has been reversed as cases surge. The industry will see a slight rebound in ad spend as the vaccine rolls out, but it won’t approach pre-pandemic levels for a while.
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 travel industry has been devastated by the coronavirus pandemic unlike any other. Everyone from airlines to hotels to travel retailers have had to halt much of their operations and marketing as a majority of consumers around the world shelter in place.
Today marks a big milestone at Insider Intelligence: We launched our new platform, unifying our two brands (eMarketer and Business Insider Intelligence) into a single online experience and expanded our Financial Services coverage. We also just published a report that’s been long in the making--and it happens to be our very first under the new brand.
In a challenging year for advertising worldwide, Germany will experience a slowdown similar to that of every other market we track. Germany’s digital ad spending had grown at double-digit rates for each of the past three years, but pandemic-disrupted 2020 will see that growth slow to just 0.8%.
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.
No industry has been as devastated by the coronavirus pandemic and its effects as travel. Airlines, car rental agencies, hotels and resorts, online booking services, cruises and destination marketing organizations, and business travel support services found their operations ground to a near-halt for much of Q2 2020, and the situation has barely improved in H2.
We forecast that US travel digital ad spending will drop by 41.0% this year to just $3.24 billion. No other industry will decline as fast or spend as little.
With the shuttering of amusement parks and cancellation of live events, the entertainment industry will see some of the biggest declines in digital ad spending this year, eclipsed only by the travel, auto, and media industries.
In 2020's pandemic-ravaged economy, Uber and Lyft will share in the pain. Usage for both services has been highly correlated with various local and statewide lockdown orders, and although we expect both companies will see better figures in H2 2020 than they did in H1, neither will get close to their 2019 numbers until next year.
While it’s too soon to bid adieu to the aspirational influencer, it’s clear that the pandemic has humbled many of even the most polished creators.
eMarketer principal analyst Debra Aho Williamson, junior analyst Blake Droesch, and vice president of content studio at Insider Intelligence Paul Verna discuss Oracle winning the TikTok bid, the 2021 Summer Olympics in Tokyo definitely happening next year, CBS All Access being rebranded to "Paramount+," "YouTube Shorts" being tested in India, Americans' 2020 travel plans, what living creature is technically immortal, and more.
eMarketer principal analysts Mark Dolliver and Yory Wurmser and forecasting analyst at Insider Intelligence Eric Haggstrom discuss whether Uber, Lyft and Airbnb can make a comeback. They then talk about what kids are doing with their increased screen time, location data consent and how comfortable Americans are with normal, everyday activities.
In our previous forecast, we anticipated high revenue and user growth for Airbnb. However, the pandemic has severely affected the company along with the overall digital travel industry.