It has certainly been a bit of a crazy year full of ups and downs and difficulties faced by many, but for certain groups there have been a lot of successes found as opportunities have managed to present themselves for growth – many of these success stories come from various online platforms, and as expected many have been able to use the current pandemic to their advantage as many have been able to capture many more new users with the increased free time and the bigger switch to online platforms as a whole.
Streamed media – One of the biggest success stories has been within streamed media through the growing number of streaming services as a unique opportunity in advertising was able to present itself – services such as Disney+ made the decision earlier in the year to change previously planned cinema releases directly to online streaming, and the recent announcement from Warner Bros showing they’ll be doing the same for 2021 certainly brings a lot of attention. At a time where there had been a lull in big releases, the advertising opportunity to say that the most anticipated releases will be available at home has certainly been a huge benefit to these platforms.
Online gaming – Attitudes towards online gaming have been changing in recent years and the mobile sector in particular has seen a lot of growth, and this has been doubled down upon over the year with newer opportunities particularly in certain sectors such as online gambling – although there were changes to prevent growth to these services such as adjustments to regulation like Gamstop, more operators have adjusted to provide more open and available services to players and list them here throughout this period of time, and with a bit of a Streisand effect occurring with the ban on advertising earlier in the year, it brought some more attention to these services throughout the pandemic.
Traditional sports and esports – The cancellations of major sporting events throughout the start of the year also brought a lot of advertising opportunities too – an interruption to the regular schedule hasn’t been seen in the same way it has been this year and the postponement of enormous events like Tokyo brought a lot of attention, but as esports was able to continue without disruption it provided a lot of opportunities for reaching a new audience, and the support from the fans once regular sporting events returned to normal meant both were able to both benefit coming out the other end of the delay.
There will be plenty of eyes looking back over this past year to see where the biggest successes were and the biggest pit falls, and with an expected return to normal perhaps by spring next year the time to take advantage of the current opportunities are starting to run out, but there is certainly still a great deal of opportunity available for those willing to look for it, and for those doing so to get ahead of the competition that may be struggling.
