Page 14 - Adnews Magazine Sep-Oct 2020

Agenda
and Hootsuite’s 2020 Digital Report. In Australia, 18 million people, or more than 71 per cent of the popu- lation, have active social media accounts and the report also showed how digital behaviour changed since lockdowns started in Australia, with 33 per cent spending more time on social media in recent weeks.
But unlike other media plat- forms, social was able to continue to attract relatively strong adver- tising dollars due to its ability to be flexible, and cost-effective for brands that were under increased financial pressure. According to SMI figures, which look at media agency booking numbers, social media advertising expenditure fell 17 per cent for the first half of the year, in line with downward trends in a market that declined 40.4 per cent in total in May. This is com- pared to other channels, such as TV, which still had strong audi- ences and fell 35.6 per cent. Other figures show investment in social media declined about 30 per cent during the height of the first wave of the pandemic.
The types of brands turning to social channels, and their reasons for doing so, changed through different phases of the pandemic. Industries such as travel and tourism, which have effectively been on pause since March, pulled almost all spending. Meanwhile, media buyers say others, particularly supermarkets, which had a significant increase in sales as people engaged in panic buying, decreased overall social marketing activity to avoid stimulating demand they couldn’t keep up with.
For the rest of the sector, many big brands turned to social media platforms in March to provide quick updates to consumers on their services and provide sup- port — a trend that was dubbed “covid-vertising”. Then as we moved into the second quarter, media buyers noted a shift where larger business’ spend plateaued but SMEs increased their advertis- ing activity by using social as their primary performance marketing platform to drive sales as foot
traffic dried up.
Facebook, taking the lion’s
share of social media revenue, reported revenue of US$18.3 billion
“While shoots were being cancelled, influencers continued creating content safely at home.” Aaron Brooks,
Vamp CEO