Digital advertising predicts: are we in a recession? What people are reading about shows who will thrive
Taboola’s Adam Singolda writes about the looming recession, what people are reading about, and how it will determine those brands who succeed. He also predicts a big surge in performance based digital advertising.
Advertising is the harbinger of economic slowdowns.
Past recessions like the pandemic and The Great Recession were each preceded by a dip in digital ad spend, which acts as a crystal ball for the economy’s future. This happens reliably — businesses that experience a slowdown in consumer spending naturally look to cut costs, some of which is taken from certain digital ad campaigns.
When the pandemic hit, advertising spend sharply dropped by 17.5%. Branding campaigns, which are notoriously hard to attribute to revenue, were the first to go. Within a few months, that pandemic effect recovered from many new performance advertising campaigns, which were born to promote necessary products like masks, food delivery, online healthcare services, online education, and more.
