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How Coronavirus Is Affecting Ad Rates And Website Traffic

How Coronavirus Is Affecting Ad Rates And Website Traffic

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The coronavirus pandemic is affecting ad rates and website traffic, with advertising rates declining while traffic to websites has surged. Image by Fauxels on Pexels

The coronavirus pandemic has caused a decline in advertising rates since the start of the year but not as bad as initially anticipated by ad rate tracking site Ezoic.

Ezoic was founded in 2010 by Dwayne Lafleur, the former CEO of the first Facebook advertising network Cubics. Ezoic is a tech platform that tries to improve website ad earnings for publishers.

“Ad rates from our Ad Revenue Index did not show a significant drop as we anticipated,” Ezoic said in a first-quarter report.

“We are still predicting Q2 to be difficult for ad rates, especially as Q2 marketing strategies historically begin to ramp up ad spending.”

While traffic to news sites and other websites such as e-commerce portals has surged due to increased online presence by people forced to work from home by the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a slump in ad revenue for publishers.

The rate at which readers are consuming coronavirus coverage has led to some record-shattering page views for media organizations, according to Parse.ly.

Publishers are, however, feeling the squeeze on their programmatic revenues as brands and platforms add the word “coronavirus” to their keyword block list amid global pandemonium over the spreading viral threat.

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“For Q2, brands are planning to spend 33 percent less on digital media, and as we reported in an earlier post, the majority of ad buyers anticipate that coronavirus will affect their Q3, Q4, and Q1 2021 strategies,” Ezoic said.