BARCELONA, Spain—Innovative ad company ExoClick has released data regarding traffic volumes, and the changes caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, across its network. ExoClick’s Business Intelligence team has been closely monitoring the network’s traffic since various states of emergency and lockdowns were put into place by different GEOs. Particularly noted are the served impressions for each week from March 9 to April 5, week 11 to week 15 of the year. The weekly percentages were calculated by comparing the traffic on ExoClick's network from March 2-8, week 10 of the year, in each GEO. Impressions increased as the lockdowns took hold.
This table shows the week-by-week percentages in more detail:
* Note Russia introduced a paid stay at home holiday from March 23-29 and on March 30 lockdown
Green figures are when the countries declared a state of emergency followed by lockdown.
Let's look at the state of the market during lockdown:
- Currently half of the planet is in lockdown. That’s billions of people who are staying at home 24/7, and they are bored! They are all going online searching for things to do and to buy.
- People living in affluent tier1 countries are either teleworking from home or their governments are still paying their salaries, which means they have income available to spend.
- They are all consuming content on their devices, looking for news updates on the pandemic and looking for entertainment to escape the unsettling reality.
- There is not much else to do besides look at content, so naturally there is an enormous increase in traffic to websites, leading to even more ad impressions.
Tips for offer targeting during lockdown
Go digital
People are reluctant to buy mail order or COD goods because they think they won’t receive their purchase for a long time. So unless you have a fast supply chain that can deliver quickly, switch your offers to digital products.
Entertainment offers
Everyone is looking for online entertainment, so try VoD, gaming, gambling, livecam offers.
Fun with upsells
Online games, sweepstakes and surveys for prizes are also great forms of entertainment for people in lockdown. Our advice is to offer digital products as prizes which could be used as upsells or cross-sells. So for example, offer a two-day trial to limited content on a VoD site, or some tokens to try out a Livecam product, etc.
Bet on casino offers
As all group gatherings are banned, there are no sporting events to bet on, so we are seeing a switch to casino offers.
Utilities
Software and utilities for desktop and mobile are in demand as users are constantly consuming on their devices.
Virtual dating
Many people live alone and dating sites are a great way to combat loneliness by chatting with someone and getting to know them. ExoClick has seen a global increase in dating members area traffic globally, demonstrated in the graph below covering the last 4 weeks.
