How COVID Changed Media Consumption
During the past several months, thanks to widespread Shelter in Home laws, most of the American populace found themselves trapped in their homes. As expected, we saw significant shifts in media consumption as people were no longer allowed outside:
Social media consumption was up to, on average, 184 minutes a day. This was a jump of nearly 40 minutes a day from Pre-COVID usage. IG and YT saw the biggest jumps 32% and 44% respectively.
People turned to Streaming television, audio and podcasts with streaming usage up 53% in America. Americans watched more than 50,000 years of content in just one day during the pandemic! Yowza!
eCommerce saw a huge 50% boost in sales in April/May as it provided the only retail outlet for many stuck in their homes.
As people emerge bleary eyed from their homes will these media consumption changes be permanent, or will we fall back on pre-COVID patterns?
Streaming, both via OOT/CTV (connected TV) and audio, will most likely remain hot. The shift to streaming could hasten the demise of the cable (which was already showing signs of weakening pre-COVID) as people who were hesitant to cut the cord at the beginning of the year now see just how easy it is to watch all their favorite shows online.
Ecommerce is already seeing a drop in sales this month. As states reopen brick and mortar stores have taken away those online sales but as the “novelty” of shopping in a physical store wears off expect those numbers to get back up to pre-COVID levels but not match April/May levels.
The big lasting changes coming from this could be:
Streaming audio and video will keep most of the gains they saw during lockdown
Cord cutting will gain even more traction in the US which spells trouble for the doomed cable industry
Businesses who pivoted their offerings to online will now have a nice secondary income (although it will never hit the levels it was initially had when there was no IRL shopping option)
What can a small local business learn and adapt from all this?
Start looking more at marketing via streaming channels. 2020 was already set to be a year we saw huge increases in OTT/CTV ad spend and COVID has made it even more important to the media mix. In addition to OTT/CTV streaming audio options either directly from Spotify/Pandora or purchased programmatically through audio ad networks could start to gain steam as well. The good news is even with the spike in usage advertisers haven’t yet flocked to these channels so competition remains relatively low. Early adaptors should benefit from lower CPMs and less competition in the space resulting in higher frequency!
Written by: Mike Peters
