How are brands responding to COVID-19? A
brand marketer survey across SEA market
Brands have been profoundly affected by the
coronavirus pandemic. Brands’ response to the coronavirus pandemic not only
impacts consumers’ trust today, but it will also significantly impact future
purchasing decisions. Moreover, brands could face irreparable damage to their reputation
due to brand safety risks associated with COVID-19 related content.
To gain insight into how brands are responding to
COVID-19 pandemic, Silverpush
conducted a
survey of 150+ agency heads, business leads in media, and brand
marketers in the SEA region in April 2020.
The survey aimed to understand how brands are adapting
their marketing strategies to the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak and how they
are mitigating the very real brand safety risks the rapidly growing coronavirus
related content consumption poses.
How are brands re-imaging and engaging
consumers in light of the pandemic?
The survey found that in the light of the pandemic,
brands are reimaging by adapting their marketing tone and initiatives to
consumer expectations. Only 5% respondents reported no change in brand
positioning pre and post COVID-19, whereas 95% reported a distinct shift that resonates
with government policies, and responds to the new consumer expectation.
Ad spending poised to decline
The industries heavily impacted by coronavirus
outbreak such as travel, hospitality, physical retail and more have and will
continue to paused marketing initiatives. Only 16% respondents said these
industries will protect marketing budgets for a stronger comeback later.
Moreover, the survey indicates that it is unlikely
that the industries such as health and FMCG that are currently experiencing
higher demand will increase marketing spend to capture the demand more
aggressively. Even though past recessions have shown that aggressive cuts in ad
spends can lead to longer recovery cycles.
Ad Spends are shifting to digital channels
Even with significantly increased TV viewership across
SEA, boosted due to government-imposed lockdowns across the region, and various
studies indicating curtailed TV ad spends can adversely affect brand health
measures - only 2% respondents said brands are spending more on TV and
mainstream media, and a large percentage indicated rapid shift to various
digital channels.
Brand safety is a key concern, and is
driving ad spend cuts
Industries, except few such as health, hygiene, pharma,
etc., are stringently avoiding advertising across COVID-19 related content.
Publisher news sites and news channels on platforms like YouTube are facing
advertisers’ block-lists due to coronavirus-related coverage.
A measure of advertisers’ confidence on brand safety
tools is depicted by how despite using third party tools to ensure safe ad
placements, brands are reducing marketing budgets and pausing advertising
specifically to avoid association with Coronavirus related content.
71% respondents reported brands are reducing marketing
budgets ranging from complete halt of marketing spends leading to up-to 80%
budget cuts, in order to avoid running ads across coronavirus related content
Can context relevance be the answer?
Emerging AI powered solutions are increasingly
focusing on providing context
relevance, and are fast becoming an answer to brand safety
woes. AI enables processing of large volumes of data at speed, with better
context, at higher scale and improved targeting efficiencies.
However, most of these contextual targeting solutions
still depend on the use of NLP and semantic analysis, not truly understanding
the sub-text, nuanced contexts, and complex relationship words have in written
or spoken language.
AI and computer vision-powered video advertising
solutions can detect in-video contexts, offering a higher degree of context
relevance that surpasses limitations of traditional keyword targeting and NLP
based technologies. They offer unparalleled insight for advertisers to place
context-relevant in video ads and exclude unsafe content in a highly structured
manner, and at the scale programmatic has traditionally offered.
You can access the full report ‘Brand
Response to COVID-19 in SEA’ for detailed insights
from the survey.
0 comments:
Post a Comment