The novel coronavirus is continuously affecting almost every industry. Social and economic pressure is impelling many countries to re-open their economies despite the surge in new positive cases and that is the ‘new normal’. Where many businesses are fighting to survive, but for mobile marketers, it is a great opportunity. People are on their phones more than ever before and engaging digitally. At home, we all are using mobile devices to keep up with the news, fill the gaps in our routine life or to just socialize. The average daily time spent on mobile rose from 5 to 8 hours giving a great opportunity for the mobile advertisers.

Due to this pandemic, certain advertising genres from hospitality to travel are pulling themselves out. Whereas others took it as an opportunity and increased their mobile advertising spend through Q2, 2020.

Change in Mobile Usage

• Business and Education Practices
  Since the lockdown, business application downloads have increased. ZOOM Cloud Meetings application is one of the most used applications during this time. BYJU’s, which is currently the most valued ed-tech start-up, saw a 43% increase in daily active users, and a 106% rise in session time.
• Mobile Gaming
  With the increasing quarantine period and users are playing mobile games for fun and kill time. The game download rate increased by 80% by the previous year.
• Streaming Platforms
  People are consuming video streaming apps more than ever before. According to CNBC, more than 75 percent Indians have purchased new OTT subscriptions during the lockdown period. The research also found there is a surge of 73 percent in Hotstar and YouTube viewership, while Amazon Prime and Netflix saw an increase in subscription with 67 percent and 65 percent, respectively in India.
• Online Delivery Apps
  With social isolation, people resort to takeaways and food delivery services. There has been a gradual increase in the use of applications that provide grocery and food delivery services.

Effects of Covid-19 on mobile advertising

Till now mobile has been less impacted by the coronavirus outbreak, with mobile ad spending falling 15% post-impact while desktop ad spending fell by 25%. As a result, the shift from desktop to mobile has accelerated. Total mobile share of global ad spending reached 51% by the end of Q1 from 48% at the beginning of March before the onset of global pandemic.

Mobile in-app PMP volume rose 65% during the pandemic while desktop PMP volume fell 20%. In just five weeks after lockdown, in-app PMP spending nearly doubled in each market. And Mobile-video-ad demand increased largely more than display.

What Next?

As economy will recover, advertising will follow providing publishers with advanced mobile advertising capabilities. The COVID-19 and its challenges have made businesses to use new means of connectivity and looking at the situation of mobile advertising approach, it seems like this will be the future of advertising.