Month: May 2021

Several media companies have been working to build out their money content for years now, each approaching the topic of personal finance with their own voice and twist. Slate is choosing to talk about money in the context of how it impacts personal relationships and the awkwardness or difficult conversations that can arise from having those conversations — a perfect topic for an advice column.

The first column published on Wednesday, for example, is written by one of the Pay Dirt columnists Elizabeth Spiers and offers advice to a reader asking what to do about a cheap friend who is the heir to a family fortune. The second columnist is Athena Valentine, who will be penning the Saturday editions of the Pay Dirt. Every week, they will be able to select a question that users submit through a Google Form.

Both of the columnists are new to Slate, but were selected because of their unique perspectives and backgrounds in finance, Wiegand said. Spiers, who previously founded Gawker and The Insurrection, started her career as a buy-side financial analyst and brings to the column her Wall Street experience. On the other hand, Valentine is the founder of the site Money Smart Latina and brings her knowledge of personal finance.

The selection of the new columnists was less focused on whether or not they could replicate what the other advice writers at Slate were already doing. “We look more at the way [columnists] see the world and approach the world more so than anybody fitting into our particular voice,” said Megan Wiegand, Slate’s managing editor overseeing Pay Dirt.

The strategy for expanding advice is in large part due to the success of the publication’s first three columns: its parenting, called Care and Feeding, its sex and relationship column How To Do It, and its longstanding general advice column Dear Prudence.

On average, Slate’s advice columns receive hundreds of submitted questions every week and each column receives hundreds of thousands of views, according to the company. Over the past two years, the publisher’s first three advice columns saw page views increase by 38% while unique visitors rose by 244%. The Dear Prudence newsletter has the brand’s second-largest overall subscriber base. Both How To Do It, which first published in 2019, and Care and Feeding, launched in 2018, were increased from two issues per week to publishing four and six issues per week, respectively, as of last year.

Because traffic is so significant to these pages, in aggregate, the advice columns are the biggest driver of programmatic ad dollars, according to the company. At launch, Pay Dirt does not have a launch sponsor, but Wiegand said that from the positive responses from sponsors on other money- and finance-related projects at the company — particularly in the podcast space — this seemed like the obvious next topic to tackle from a business perspective as well.

The advice content’s high engagement has translated into it being a significant converter of readers to paid subscribers as well, with advice being one of the top reasons people become Slate Plus members, said Bill Carey, Slate’s director of strategy.

This correlation makes sense because of late, there has been a trend in journalism to lean toward reporters’ and writers’ unique voices, according to Gwen Vargo, director of reader revenue at American Press Institute. Platforms like Substack and Subtext allow for direct relationships to form with one writer in intimate settings on people’s phones, like the text message app and in their inboxes, she said. Beyond that, the opinions reporters and columnists share on platforms like Twitter allow readers to further humanize the people who create the content they read, making it feel like relationships are forming.

What’s more, converting a reader to a subscriber is “the sum of everything — not just one article but every interaction that you’re having,” Vargo said. So the more columns a consumer reads because of the connection they have with its writer, the more likely they are to subscribe.

David Perell teaches people how to write online and expand their professional network in his Write of Passage course. He markets primarily through Twitter, where he has an audience of 183,000 — built by sharing writing advice every day on the platform for years. Tiago Forte attracted his audience by blogging about personal knowledge management, leading to his cohort course Building a Second Brain. More than 40,000 people subscribe to each of these creators’ weekly newsletters.

There are no sponsorships or brand partnerships involved, and the courses aren’t hosted on intermediary platforms like Skillshare or Masterclass — though some creators use these subscription platforms for visibility and reach among online learners. Instead, creators use a stack of software products they own and control. Without a middleman, the creator shoulders more responsibility but also reaps more of the rewards.

Ali Abdaal is a productivity YouTuber with 1.5 million followers. His Part-Time YouTuber Academy cohort course teaches learners how to launch a YouTube channel as a side project, as he did. Delivery blends live lectures, Q&As, online communities and self-paced video content. He’s built a team to help him manage the courses and, together, they iterate relentlessly between cohorts to improve the product.

Last year, Abdaal’s maker business generated over $1.3 million in revenue. “If 400 people join a cohort, I can make a million dollars in just a few days. That’s a flabbergasting level of revenue compared to every other part of my business,” he said. “The course makes significantly more money than anything. I think that’s a marker of its value and impact.” 

Influencers are, of course, masters of content creation. With many classes now online, university lectures exist just one browser tab away from them. “I studied medicine at Cambridge. Everybody I know used digital content to study for their degree,” said Abdaal. “Online learning through platforms like YouTube was already a big part of how students, even at prestigious universities, learned their course material and revised for exams before the pandemic.”

Online university courses had already risen in popularity before the pandemic. In its aftermath, a range of elite institutions from Princeton to Spelman College have created fully online offerings and slashed tuition fees. Following this disruption, could new cohort courses soon pose a challenge in preparing learners for the world of work and business? 

Universities may struggle to compete with the production quality of creators’ content and the FOMO effect of joining an influencer’s cohort, but they enjoy other advantages: their brand name, history and alumni list. The prestige still sways people, but institutions must consider what learners value in their educational experience and evolve their online content to align with it.

“Cohort-based online courses are exploding and creating a diverse ecosystem of nontraditional learning opportunities. The last decade has created alternatives for individuals to upskill and reskill that aren’t so dependent on colleges and universities,” says Michael Horn, senior strategist at Guild Education, an education consultancy working with Fortune 1000 companies. “The explosion of choices makes for a much more dynamic and fast-changing market that is creating more opportunities for learners to learn almost anything in new ways.”

Anne-Laure Le Cunff is founder of Ness Labs, an online community focused on mindfulness productivity. She shares neuroscience-based strategies for self-improvement to an audience of 29,000 in her Maker Mind newsletter each week. Le Cunff has run her own cohort-based courses in the past, and she’s currently a student in Abdaal’s YouTuber Academy.

The influencer running a cohort course may be what convinces learners to buy in, but Le Cunff believes a large audience isn’t the only factor people consider. “It’s about expertise more than being an influencer with a big following,” she says. “What Ali is doing works because he’s a genuine expert in what he’s teaching. People are looking for that credibility from an online teacher.”

Learning outcomes are also important. Most cohort course landing pages emphasize past students’ success with testimonials and endorsements. “This allows you to investigate what others have achieved through the program before buying,” Le Cunff adds. “You aren’t just learning the ideas, but using a framework to put everything into action. I’ve already seen good progress myself: I have 2,400 YouTube subscribers after just a few weeks.”

Brands and universities can take a variety of lessons from the influencer approach to online education, especially from emerging names in the space. Dickie Bush launched his first cohort course, Ship 30 For 30 priced at $250 per learner, as a side project last year. Since then, he’s built a Twitter following of 23,000 from scratch, following David Perell’s same model of sharing advice for aspiring writers on the platform.

“My focus is on helping people address common pain points as they build a writing habit and start publishing. These areas are rarely talked about in most courses,” Bush explains. “The biggest value-add, though, is the community. Learners support each other through continuous feedback, accountability and collaboration. We try to create a culture of action and iteration, the same values that power the course itself.”

People once followed influencers for their lifestyle. In today’s world of online learning, they are following them for their knowledge instead. And it seems that digestible, internet-ready expertise is a much more lucrative path.

Late last month, the service, which offered customers the ability to read up to 50 stories per month from premium news publishers including The New York Times, The Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal for $35 per month or $300 per year, began advertising through a classified ad network run by Study Hall, a popular listserv among media freelancers: Users who used the code Study Hall could save 20% on an annual subscription if they paid by May 15.

There was one problem. Subscribd does not have business relationships with any of the publications listed in its bundle, so after receiving emails from the legal representatives from those publications, Study Hall terminated its ad deal, LastPass, the password sharing service that Subscribd had been using to share passwords, suspended Subscribd’s account, and Subscribd changed its website, replacing its homepage with a screen asking visitors to join a private beta. (Users who navigate to Subscribd’s website through the ads can still sign up and enter their credit cards).

Subscribd’s founder, Stafford Palmieri, insists Subscribd was testing the waters and weighing market interest. “What we were testing is whether anybody would buy something like that on an individual basis,” Palmieri said. 

Testing the waters or not, Subscribd was offering content it was not legally licensed to offer, and its strange debut speaks to some curious features of the subscription media landscape. Digital news and entertainment subscriptions continue to proliferate, but bundles, at least so far, have not kept up, and so unauthorized attempts at sharing, or reselling, subscriptions continue to evolve.

At the moment, the longed-for celestial jukebox — sometimes called a Spotify for news, or a Netflix for news — doesn’t exist. A bundle like Apple News+ might offer subscribers access to lots of publications, but it often restricts subscribers to the licensed publications’ current issues — accessing content a publisher produced even a few months ago is difficult, if not impossible.

Most bundles today are also missing at least some of the most popular news sources, which are busy pursuing ambitious subscriber targets they’ve set for themselves. The New York Times and Gannett, for example, each expect to reach a mark of 10 million subscribers in the next few years.

And until they hit those marks, each seems unlikely to join any venture whose success might get in the way of their goals. “I cannot imagine any of these publications, knowing their strategies, cooperating with this type of play,” said Richard Kreisman, the principal of Kreisman Information Consulting, a consultancy focused on publisher content licensing.

“Premium news publishers are all about building their own subscriber bases,” Kreisman added. “Most of them have pulled back from doing any kind of licensing at all, except to non-core markets.”

And once those publications hit those milestones, they could simply set new ones. Even though subscriptions have been part of their business models for a while, the most premium publishers can think on a large scale about their total addressable markets, said Neal Zuckerman, managing director and leader of the global media practice at Boston Consulting Group.  

“I think we still have a long way to go in seeing penetration,” Zuckerman said. 

And as those publishers continue to hunt for subscribers, they also have to keep their eyes peeled for bad actors looking to resell or repackage access to their content. Though they are difficult to scale, subscription reselling operations regularly burble up thanks to the proliferation of password-sharing services.

A site called First American News, for example, has blanketed eBay with offers of discounted access to sites including Bloomberg, The Economist and the Wall Street Journal — it sells five years of access to the Journal, which normally costs $39 per month, for just $54.

“It’s not uncommon,” a source at one of the publications offered in Subscribd’s bundle said of reselling efforts.

When we spoke this time last year, 1-800 Contacts had just seen an uptick in new customers due to the pandemic. At the same time, you were increasing your media investments in new channels like podcasts and streaming audio as well as on linear TV. Is that still the case? 

I don’t think any marketer is going to be telling you that whatever they were doing a year ago is exactly what they’re doing now. Things continue to change so rapidly. Marketers today are dealing with a combination of pretty dramatic forces all happening at the same time. We’ve got the new, new normal now that we’re seeing light at the end of the tunnel with vaccines and allowing the economy to open up — or open up more freely. Most companies are seeing a shift in consumer attitudes and behavior about what they want to do next. There’s a lot of pent-up energy demand. With the opening of the economy, you’ve got some companies that sat out a lot of last year coming back to the market so you have a media marketplace that’s more dynamic than it’s been in a long time.

There are also the long-looming privacy changes that are coming to fruition now.

Yeah, at the same time, there are some pretty dramatic shifts in terms of the tools that marketers use to be able to reach customers. You’ve got iOS 14.5 changing the way that we think about continuing to communicate with customers through their digital journey or the lack of ability to [do so]. You’ve got the cookie-less world right around the corner in a matter of weeks. And so there’s just so many things that are marketers having to deal with. Certainly what we are doing very successfully this time last year is decently different than what we’re doing right now because of all those factors. 

What are you doing now to manage those shifts? 

We’re still a heavy digitally-centric company because we’re one of the original DTC brands in the marketplace. From a digital perspective, we’re doing what a lot of digital companies are doing, which is finding ways to personalize the experience of the customers using both our digital touchpoints and our human touchpoints in our call centers. Bringing personalization to that digital experience is much more about how we’re using our own technologies and our own ability to build relationships with prospects and our existing customers versus relying on third parties to sort of facilitate that. [We’re trying to] really refine how we think about our digital channels and think about what’s a chapter two on how we think about channels like display and paid social. And then what else can we do to bring in differentiators in how we message customers, things that help them understand what our brand stands for, what it is that we do and continuing to polish our message and how we bring that message to customers.

It sounds like you’re using your own first-party data that you have on consumers to inform some of the media channels you’re spending on now. Is that what you’re saying?

[We’re] scaling our customer data platform as we’ve invested in data scientists to really restructure how we think about our own data and what we can do with it. And then we bring in new tools like multi-touch attribution instruments to allow us to put those insights into the marketplace in more real-time and measure the results in more real-time, meaning bringing those insights from how we interact with our existing customers and applying those into the prospect universe.

With the privacy issues at the forefront now, what impact does that have on how you’re thinking about customer data?

We built our brand over decades, we have customers who’ve been with us — yes, we have a lot of new customers every day — but we have customers who’ve trusted us for years and years. It’s in the DNA of this company that we always are upfront or straightforward with customers. We’re transparent. We ask for their permission versus assume you have it. We treat customers like a friend, like somebody you invite over to dinner. And so if you’re treating people like that, you’re not going to violate their trust, which starts with violating their privacy. Also because we’re [a] HIPAA compliant entity, we stay on the right side of not just privacy law but medical privacy law.

Lastly, let’s circle back to your media mix. How has it actually changed over the last year?

Our mix is similar. Yes, we’re looking at the next round of podcasting. Right now with linear TV — linear TV rates have gone through the roof in Q1 so that’s caused us to revisit if there are other media channels that are more efficient. The media environment [is different]. This time last year, for those of us who were lucky enough to be in a business that we could still operate during COVID, given all the customers that we wanted to take care of when they didn’t have other options for their vision, we were able to spend into channels at levels that we normally aren’t able to because the rates were so low. That’s not the case anymore. 

When people clicked from the email to learn more, they landed on a page hosted by Experian-owned customer data platform Cheetah Digital. There, potential bow buyers confirmed personal information, provided appointment preferences and were asked to respond to questions about the last time they bought a bow and when they planned to buy another. Information about the customer and appointment was provided to the stores to arrange scheduling.

But those emails or other offers the company runs through similar promotions don’t just drive in-store sales, they generate psychographic and purchase intent data on people’s favorite bow features or what they dislike about bows they own currently — information Pure Archery can use to detect what people in its database might be interested in buying down the road. 

“All of those attributes can be expanded on and modeled to both cross-sell to that group again and deepen that relationship in addition to finding more buyers that look like them,” said Claire Russell, head of media at Fitzco, an independent agency in Atlanta.

Sometimes there are tensions with retailers when product makers in other sectors, like consumer packaged goods, want to take more control over the customer relationship, said Chris Chapo, vp of customer success at customer data platform firm Amperity. However, he said experiential brands such as sporting goods makers are well-suited to generating data without alienating retailers because the data might be used by the manufacturer to provide product use information as well as to keep in touch with customers to promote future in-store purchases. “If you figure out the best way to serve the consumer, all boats rise,” he said.

Pure Archery Group’s data gathering strategy wasn’t always as dialed in as it is today. Now, if a social media influencer like Eva Shockey — also a TV personality who’s been seen on her dad’s Outdoor Channel show Jim Shockey’s Hunting Adventures — promotes a sweepstakes giveaway for the Bowtech “Eva Shockey Signature Series” bow, that Cheetah Digital data generation process is at work behind the scenes when Bowtech supplies influencer talent with product images and a link to a promotional landing page. “They have access to a lot of followers…and we capture their audience,” said Suiter.

Firms like Cheetah Digital that are pushing brand clients to gather first-party data argue it’s a way to reduce their reliance on Google and Facebook’s audience connections. “The vast majority of marketers’ budgets go to the duopoly,” said Richard Jones, CMO of Cheetah Digital. He suggested that, by building their own first-party data about their customers, brands can “drive them off those platforms and get them in their own database.”

But it doesn’t always work that way. Suiter said he often uses Bowtech’s customer data to target personalized ads to specific people through Google, which he said sometimes costs less than paying Google to layer on targeting data. “We’re providing our data set to the walled gardens to advertise against…so our dollar goes much further,” he said. “I actually just let them load those people up — we don’t pay as much money for that.”

• Nearly every presentation flaunted the targeting tools and first-party data that large media publishers and platforms have at their disposal and can offer advertisers looking to reach — and engage with — specific audiences.
• TikTok urged marketers to find a way to fit into the conversations and trends happening on the platform to resonate with its users.
• Meredith introduced new measurement tools for video advertisers and a slate of programming, with a focus on entertainment and women’s experiences.
• NBCUniversal announced a new ad unit for Peacock and teased audience targeting and programmatic buying offerings coming later this year

DE&I discourse

The last day of IAB’s NewFronts 2021 opened with a conversation between Sheryl Goldstein, evp of member engagement & development at IAB and Monique Nelson, chair and CEO of agency UWG, on diversity, equity and inclusion progress across the industry. Goldstein said that the Inclusion Institute that IAB launched last year has been getting a lot of “interest” from IAB members “but not much funding yet.” She urged members to invest in the initiative. Without a DE&I strategy in place to move forward with these efforts (rather than “staying on the wheel” of DE&I commitments without accountability), brands and agencies “won’t make it,” Nelson said.

TikTok

TikTok’s presentation was the highlight of the last day, with its entertaining and informative presentation that directly surfaced and answered marketers’ questions on how to use the platform to align their brands with community-driven content. 

The presentation — with its entertaining, informal but informative segments — was the talk of the NewFronts chat box. Advertisers and media executives praised the event, many calling it the highlight of the week. (A fireside chat featured Sandie Hawkins, general manager of global business solutions at TikTok and Sofia Hernandez, head of business marketing, in two armchairs wearing house slippers and thick socks, having a breezy but insightful conversation.)

“People check Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. They watch TikTok like Netflix and Hulu,” Hawkins said during the presentation. 

TikTok’s NewFront was split up into four parts: the fireside chat — which went over questions marketers may have about aligning with community driven content, a discussion about the “paradigm shift” of defining the culture of the moment on TikTok, a segment highlighting TikTok creators and how brands can work with them and advice from marketers who have had success on the platform.

That last segment featured CMOs and other ad executives (from American Eagle to Chevrolet) stressing the need for brands to understand and fit into the cultural norms and community on TikTok in order to have success on the platform, participate in trends, shift marketing to match those trends and take risks and have faith in creators to build users’ trust with a brand.

The presentation pointed to brands that went viral on TikTok organically, like Ocean Spray with Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” song and American Eagle’s crossover leggings, as well as the “unplanned purchases” made via the “#TikTokMadeMeBuyIt” hashtag. Hernandez described the consumer journey not as “a linear path to purchase,” but a “flywheel,” where consumers take action in the moment. The buzzword of the presentation was “community commerce,” which refers to people promoting products without being paid for the endorsement — a phenomenon that used to be called “earned media” back when Facebook was the newest platform on the block.

Another message from TikTok repeated a few times throughout the presentation: the platform is not just for young people. TikTok may be trying to appeal to marketers who want to reach people beyond Gen Z.

30% of TikTok users in the U.S. said they watch less TV, streaming and other video content since joining TikTok, according to a March 2021 Kantar study cited in the presentation. TikTok has 100 million monthly users in the U.S.

Meredith Corp.

After an energetic presentation from TikTok, Meredith’s NewFronts offering was more traditional. The publisher made an effort to show to advertisers the magnitude of its reach among women in the U.S. (94% of American women, according to the company). The presentation — which featured Alysia Borsa, president of Meredith Digital, Amanda Dameron, chief digital content officer and Marla Newman, evp of digital sales — began with a sizzle reel showing women using EatingWell to make a smoothie, Shape and Health to do a home workout, InStyle to choose a work from home outfit and Real Simple to improve home design.

At the NewFronts, Meredith announced the Video Accountability Suite, a variety of measurement tools aimed at proving video advertisers’ performance, such as brand awareness, purchase intent or driving retail sales.

Borsa claimed Meredith’s content drove more than $1.2 billion in retail sales. She also discussed Meredith’s shoppable video offerings, the 12 billion intent signals at their disposal and its first-party data that can provide audience and trends insights and predictions. For example, a recent insight revealed interest in authentic international food went up 39% year over year among Meredith’s audience, leading to a new cooking, travel and regional history show called “3 Ways,” from AllRecipes and Food & Wine, that will show three ways to make a main dish in three different cities (from steak to tofu, and from Miami to London). There was a 128% increase in traffic to home improvement content year over year on Better Homes & Gardens, so a new show called “Home Upgrade” will focus on that topic.

The presentation ran through a list of programming on topics of female empowerment, lifestyle, food, entertainment and celebrity and parenting, such as “SeeHer: Multiplicity,” in partnership with the Association of National Advertisers’ movement championing women. Meredith also revealed a portfolio-wide new franchise called “She Rises,” part of the company’s mission to highlight more women from diverse backgrounds.

Meredith’s streaming channel PeopleTV is a “springboard to introduce co-branded programming with other brands in Meredith’s portfolio” this year, Dameron told Digiday in an earlier interview. Some new programming will be optimized for social distribution, with segments for PeopleTV as well. For example, the most searched topic on People.com is “parents.” A new show called “The New Parenthood” is coming to People TV, as well as more lifestyle content. Ayesha Curry, who has a lifestyle magazine with Meredith called Sweet July, is coming out with a new streaming cooking show featuring one pot meals called “One & Done.”

Meredith says its digital engagement rose 16% and video views across its owned-and-operated sites increased 45% year over year from January through December 2020, citing Google Analytics. Newman ended the presentation by stressing Meredith’s flexible buying model.

Penske Media

Penske’s presentation was made up of sizzle reels introducing the numerous brands until the company’s ownership — from Billboard to The Hollywood Reporter. Mark Howard, chief ad and partnership officer at PMC, brought up the company’s first-party data studio Atlas, and spoke of Penske’s investment in the SXSW festival, which will expand the company’s live events business opportunities.

Ellen Digital

Ellen DeGeneres’ media company announced the launch of three new “fan-focused” digital brands: Bubble, Sage and Smile. Bubble will serve mothers and house shows like Kristen Bell’s “Momsplaining” and Sage will focus on women breaking barriers and fighting for inclusivity, with shows like “Ladylike,” a new upcoming series. Smile will feature feel-good stories and everyday heroes, such as in the new series “All Good Things” that will highlight people making a positive impact on their communities. The company says it has 300 million social followers that generated 8 billion views last year, across all platforms.

NBCUniversal

NBCUniversal touted its targeting capabilities and audience segments, via solutions like its new NBCU Audience Insights Hub, but the company really focused the conversation on One Digital Video, its streaming video ad program that opens up access to the company’s premium video inventory across streaming, linear, cable, digital and social. NBCU claims advertisers can reach 200 million potential customers across access points.

One Digital Video also opens up the company’s inventory in Peacock, NBCUniversal’s “biggest investment in streaming,” with over 40 million sign-ups and 40,000 hours of content, according to Jenny Burke, evp, advertising strategy. Two-thirds of Peacock users are new to NBCU’s streaming platforms, according to Burke. Of those 40-plus million Peacock sign-ups, only 14 million households regularly use the streaming service.

Kevin Lappen, svp of Peacock advertising sales & partnerships, announced a new ad unit for Peacock called Spotlight, comparing it to the reach of prime-time ads on linear TV, but with better targeting, according to the presentation. With Spotlight, advertisers can pay for their ad to be the first shown to anyone watching Peacock within a given time period in an attempt to emulate the time-sensitive reach of linear TV.

NBCUniversal will open up Peacock’s ad inventory for programmatic buying in the fourth quarter of this year, according to James Kreckler, svp of digital media sales. He also touted NBCU’s ability to reach 35 million Hispanic consumers every month, in both English and Spanish.

Karen Schuchardt, svp of advertising sales & partnerships, mentioned NBCU Checkout, the company’s ad product that makes content shoppable — the feature “turns content into a transaction,” giving consumers the ability to buy products in “one click, one swipe and one scan.”

For marketers, it’s a sign that points to a pent-up demand for leisure travel and a comeback of its marketing. However, much of the focus is on domestic travel marketing as there’s still pandemic uncertainty and international travel restrictions.

“We’re going to start seeing a lot of travel marketing come back online in the next few weeks,” said Nate Skinner, co-managing director of creative agency Stink Studios. “It’s definitely week-to-week, but it feels like we’re going to see an acceleration in marketing once marketers are sure a travel message is one consumers want, or will even be excited, to hear.”

The city of Boston last month launched its “All Inclusive Boston” campaign targeting Bostonians and those within the tri-state area. Down South, Virginia is positioning itself as a safe, road trip destination as health and safety remains a top concern for many, according to Lindsey Norment, brand director, for Virginia Tourism.

“Identifying the low-risk experiences and taking advantage of the fact that people are open to looking into new places that they didn’t consider before will be a big part of our strategy,” Norment said via email, noting that road trips may be the entry point for a return to normal travel. 

As the pandemic rattled the world last year, airline and travel brands took a major hit. In 2020, U.S. airlines, hotels and resorts spent an estimated $834.9 million on media compared to about $1.8 billion in 2019, per Kantar data (those figure exclude social media spending as Kantar doesn’t track social spending). It’s unclear how much travel and tourism brands will spend on media in 2021, but flexibility in media buy will be crucial moving forward, according to Lauren Cipressi, associate media director at Mediahub agency. 

“COVID rates and traveler confidence has been volatile and regional, so it is crucial to have added flexibility in our media buys,” Cipressi said. “It provides the ability to reallocate budget across channels, messaging, and tactics based on near real-time performance and updated CDC guidance.” 

According to new research from data and intelligence company Resonate, one-third of consumers believe leisure travel activities will resume by this August. The research also states more than two-thirds of Americans are or intend to be vaccinated by this June.

But even as vaccination rollout continues, we’re not out of the pandemic woods yet and marketers are careful to build out messaging that takes that into account. Much of the return to normal travel hinges on people’s behavior and how far they’re willing to travel. Per Deepthi Prakash, global director of product and marketing at TBWAWorldwide, international travel may be on hold until 2022 and beyond given the uncertainty of the pandemic, international travel restrictions and the potential for more lockdowns. 

Carey Malloy, director of brand marketing at Orbitz and Cheap Tickets echoed Prakash’s sentiments, noting that the company intends to keep a watchful eye on vaccine distribution in anticipation that travel demand will continue to grow.

“We’re energized by the strong progress made in distributing COVID-19 vaccines and wholeheartedly support the scientific community in this effort,” Malloy said via email. “We believe the return of travel depends on their success.”