Over the past couple of weeks, paid search specialists Adthena have been sharing[1] some fascinating insight into how the coronavirus pandemic is affecting the paid search sector in markets around the globe.
I spoke to Adthena’s VP of marketing Ashley Fletcher about the questions C-level executives are asking, their plans in the short and longer-term, and what he is observing in the data.
We’re past the shock stage
C-level executives now want to see the lay of the land amidst the coronavirus outbreak. Retailers, for instance, want a view of who’s moving out and many are asking:
- What’s happened to strategy?
- How are markets reacting?
- How do we now adjust?
Paid search is a fantastic window on all of this. While our offline lives have been massively disrupted by the coronavirus, the paid search sector is comparatively ever-present. We see customers switch to the channel when they can’t use others and we have good segmentation within data across products and more business verticals.
“Search intelligence offers not only remarkable clarity but also a real-time lens into market movements, trends, and opportunities across verticals and in close to real-time”,
Fletcher writes at the Adthena blog.
“PPC is a stable, transparent refuge every marketer needs to be leveraging right now to keep the oars in the water.”
There is positivity even in industries that have been hardest hit
One of the surprises for Fletcher is that the sentiment among marketers he is speaking to is not all doom and gloom.
“Businesses like the UK travel sector (we’re seeing this with some of our hotel chain clients) have been the hardest hit. But the positive aspect of this is we are already seeing this sector with eyes on their recovery and