The Coronavirus, or COVID-19, is having a tremendous impact on global markets and the health of people all over the world. While AdToro encourages everyone to follow the World Health Organization and the Center for Disease Control & Prevention for updates on the spread of the virus, we know many agencies and business owners are looking for insight on how this deadly disease is affecting their digital marketing strategies. As we work through our client strategies, here is what we are seeing.
Food and Service; Travel and Hospitality
Unfortunately, both the Food & Service and the Travel & Hospitality industry have been hit the hardest. With the CDC, local governments, national governments, and the WHO advising against dining out or unessential travel, many of our industry and travel clients have seen a huge loss in revenue. If you belong in this category, we advise curving ad spend or pausing campaigns until there is more resolution on the situation.
E-Commerce
When the Coronavirus was only in China, there was fear that Amazon was going to face steep declines. However, and we’re only judging this by our client’s accounts, we have not seen this to be the case. As of March 16th, our ACOS (advertising-cost-of-sale) has seen comparable MoM performance with February. Social distancing seems to be giving people more time to do online shopping, especially for products that they can use indoors. Our advise to our e-commerce community would be to continue to spend at planned levels, while closely monitoring your performance for dips.
Senior Living and Retirement Communities
The Coronavirus is especially deadly when it comes to the elderly. For this reason, we are seeing that people are less interested in searching for retirement or senior living homes right now. Despite the decline in search volume, the senior living clients that we have are still seeing a positive ROAS. Similarly to our advise for the e-commerce community, AdToro recommends continuing to spend at planned levels, while closely monitoring your performance for dips.
Brick and Mortar Locations
For any business that relies on store traffic, we recommend curving digital ad spend significantly. As more businesses close their doors to keep their employees healthy, the less interest people have in coming into a store. We strongly advise to limit digital ad spend.
Bonus: Facebook Is Blocking Any Ad Looking to Exploit the Pandemic
If you’re thinking about running ads to exploit the Coronavirus, think again. Facebook is taking the progressive step to block any ads that are looking to capitalize on the pandemic that the world is facing.
