May 14, 2021

Silver Lining Update


Back in October, I wrote about the pandemic's 'silver lining' for DRTV advertisers: record-breaking sales. The post was about a report from DRMetrix showing that during and after the quarantine period of March to May, the top marketer increased spending by an eye-popping 1,420% over the previous year and “increases of 300% to 400% were not uncommon.”

Now comes a new report from DRMetrix covering all of 2020. It finds that spending on all short-form products increased more than 55%. This is especially good news since spending in the category had been sliding, tumbling more than 26% the year before (click the chart above).

“It’s amazing when, during a huge media disruption, you have one sector of the industry that has 20/20 vision,” says Joseph Gray, CEO of DRMetrix, in a new blog post about the study. “Performance-based television advertisers could see what was really happening with their TV advertising investment and KPIs in real time down to the network, daypart, and creative level. What they discovered is that response levels were at an all time high while media rates were at an all time low. Moreover, performance-based television advertisers could measure that consumers were still responding, engaging, and buying.”

Check out the full Covid Edition report for more information.