Executive Round-Up: What Ad Spend Looks Like in a Post-COVID World

The world is continuing to open up, and we asked executives across the industry what ad spend will look like in this new normal. Here’s what they had to say. 

Keith Bowen
Chief Revenue Officer
a4 Advertising
“As the country begins to return to some semblance of normalcy, we are seeing an acceleration of ad spend across our local, regional and national lines of business. Our advertising partners are actively welcoming their customers back to their pre-pandemic lives.“

James Rooke
General Manager
Effectv
“As America reopens, we’re starting to see a bounce back from categories that were hit hardest during the pandemic, for example the travel, entertainment and dining sectors. At the same time, we’re seeing continued strength in sectors that showed growth during the pandemic, for example health & wellness, telecommunications and home improvement. However, what’s most interesting is how the pandemic has accelerated a shift towards more audience-based, multi-screen campaigns. This is a reflection of how the pandemic shone a light on the importance of leveraging data to enable marketers to continue to find and deliver their target audiences against the backdrop of dramatically shifting viewing behaviors and programming schedules. We expect this shift to continue to accelerate over the next year, which in turn will move the industry to an impression based model and away from traditional measurement currencies. “

David Solomon
CEO
Viamedia
“One of the more interesting trends we have noticed coming out of the pandemic is a much more diverse media mix. While the world was locked down, we saw non-traditional categories emerge with advertising campaigns [that] leverage both cable/ streaming inventory along with digital elements to maximize reach to a captive audience who were safe at home, but looking for entertainment. Thankfully, these new categories have now become regular advertisers.“