The constraints to advertising budgets during the pandemic has made marketers become more versatile in ad allocation across media platforms online and offline.
DRT Communications (DRT) noted for this year’s 1st quarter, the Jamaican Ministry of Health (MoH) had the top spend across newspaper, radio and T.V., devoting most of their ad budget to newspapers. Flow and Digicel took the 2nd and 3rd spots respectively but focused their advertising budgets mainly on radio and TV. Like the MoH, Courts focused their ad resources mostly in the newspaper to finish 4th.
For more information on DRT’s media monitoring services, check out Media Monitoring.
What is very interesting about DRT’s analysis, is that newspaper ad spend was second to radio advertising by the end of the 1st quarter.
This goes against what is happening at some ad agencies during COVID-19. The three (3) main spend strategies for these entities seemed to be (a) rapid decrease in print ad spend, (b) increase in online ad spend, and (c) increase in radio and TV ad spend.
The reason for the disparity is that most of the brands represented as DRT’s top spenders in traditional media are not represented in our past survey of brands who are advertising online.
Interestingly, our agency noted, that the increase in ad spend for traditional media during the pandemic came mainly from brands who were a part of the technology industry.
Online marketing averaged an additional 20% allotment to advertising budgets. These brands were going to meet their audience. 82% of Jamaicans surveyed at the beginning of the pandemic, used social media to stay abreast of COVID-19 news and for entertainment.
Globally, ad spend during COVID-19 has pantomimed the upsurge in revenue for household products. Influencer Marketing Hub (IMH) noted the following trends in consumer products worldwide:
Additionally, PubMatic has charted the increase and decrease in global ad spend across industries which somewhat correlates with the growing product categories during the pandemic and directly relates to ad spend from the Jamaican agency outlook.
For more information on global media buy trends during the pandemic, check out: Coronavirus (COVID-19) Marketing & Ad Spend Impact: Report + Stats.
The IMF has noted that the Jamaican economy will contract for the year 2020 by 5%. This is a worrying development for the local business community. What can ad agencies do to support our local brands in maintaining their visibility at the tail end of the pandemic and post-COVID-19?
Project empathy when designing marketing strategies as brands want to know that you can relate to their business requirements during the present state of the economy
Offer competitive pricing for brands with smaller ad budgets
Keep abreast of what your brands are doing in the market
Understand your brand’s consumer-base and the online trends which are keeping their attention
Leverage your understanding of offline and online marketing techniques to your clients as they will need your guidance more than ever
Supply your clients with a Post COVID-19 marketing strategy as the consumer terrain is guaranteed to keep changing over the next 9 -12 months
Need more information on what is to come in the ad world? Take a look at next week’s blog Jamaica’s POST COVID-19 REALITY