Viewership data in Australia shows a surge in consumers visiting financial content on premium publishers due to the COVID-19 induced economic turbulence.
A comparison of video ad impressions available in the first week of April from adtech platform SpotX, shows video content in the finance category rose 515%, technology was up 152%, and entertainment was up 109%, compared to the middle of March.
There have also significant fluctuations in video ad spend.
In the month to April 12, there was a 433% increase in video ad spend in the pets category.
With two thirds of Australians owning a pet, the increase in spend reflects how consumers are prioritising their pets to help cope with the new normal of forced isolation.
There was also a 282% increase in lottery themed video advertising, fuelled by an increased desire for financial security during this period of furloughs and redundancies.
The data on the SpotX platform in this period shows steep falls in video advertising for travel which is down 65%, real estate down 58% and retail down 55%, reflecting the closure of non-essential services in Australia.
The increase in viewership shows consumers across the country are responding to the new normal by spending more time watching video.
"As the ever-changing situation surrounding COVID-19 unfolds, we continue to see significant changes in video streaming consumption and advertiser trends," SpotX Australia managing director Ilda Jamison says.
"With over 20 billion video ad calls globally per day from screens of all sizes, SpotX is uniquely positioned to analyze the changes in viewership and spend across a number of content categories in Australia."
SpotX’s premium publisher partners in Australia are seeing similar trends.
Nine has experienced double digital growth across its digital news sites for the week of March 30.
With Daily Mail Australia, 57% of readers surveyed wanted brands to continue advertising as normal and 60% wanted brands to distract them from coronavirus.
Additionally, audio streaming and gaming platforms saw marked increases as stricter self-isolation measures were put in place.
Gameloft has seen a spike in time spent playing games in Australia and volume of new users during the outbreak.
Daily active users and daily new users have increased 7% and 14% respectively since the beginning of the year with minutes played up 12% when comparing the last two weeks of January versus the last two weeks of March.
Spotify is experiencing changes in listening behaviour with self-isolation as consumers are watching as well as listening. 20% of the time spent on Spotify’s ad-supported service occurs in the foreground of the screen and this number is growing with the increase of visual elements in the Spotify experience.
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