IAB Pandemic Survey Shows More Ad Buyers Pausing Spending

Ad Spend Report

The INTERACTIVE ADVERTISING BUREAU has released its third buy-side survey of the impact of the COVID-19 CORONAVIRUS pandemic, looking at the trends from MARCH to APRIL and
finding that 97% of advertising buyers have re-forecast their budgets through JUNE, with more pausing their ad spend, while digital ad spend appears to be rebounding slightly but still down and traditional media has taken a substantial hit.

Looking at the estimated percentage of change against the original budgets for MARCH through JUNE for buyers adjusting or pausing their ad spend, the negative change has increased for traditional media (radio, linear TV, out-of-home, print, direct mail), from 39% down MARCH 18-24 to 44% down APRIL 15-21, while digital has gone in the other direction, from 33% down to 29% down. Among traditional media, radio, direct mail, out-of-home, and print all showed negative trends versus the original budgets, while linear TV showed slight improvement.

The survey said that 60% of advertisers creating new assets are saying they are incorporating messaging related to the pandemic into their new creative, but as for the 40% of buyers running advertising running adjacent to news reports, they are more likely to be pulling or pausing ads due to inappropriate or irrelevant creative or modifying or developing new creative to fit the situation and are more likely to be increasing ad spend in display and search. The 45% of buyers who had budgeted sports in their 2020 plans, 56% of them have reallocated their sports spend to the second half of the year.

See the full deck here.

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