Differences in reporting are likely driven by differences in client bases—which are magnified now because the effects of the pandemic can vastly vary depending on the type of product being sold, its likelihood of running out of stock, seller access to alternate logistics options and more.
“Those of our clients who sell more essential products saw really strong sales in early to mid-March,” said Mark Ballard, vice president of research at Merkle. “A lot of people were stocking up. And those brands faced the challenge of depleting their inventory, so their results were weakened by that in the tail end of March.”
Pacvue president and cofounder Melissa Burdick described how the complex pandemic-related issues could play out on eMarketer’s The Ad Platform podcast in April. “If those [essential] categories have inventory, people are spending a ton, so the [ad] spending is way up in those categories,” she said. “Other nonessential categories and decreased-demand categories, like auto and apparel, have just fallen off a cliff in terms of both demand and thus [ad] spending. Then there are other categories of increased demand like DIY, now that we’re all stuck in our house, and tools and consumer electronics and toys. The toy category usually comes alive in Q4, but we’ve seen … brands triple their average daily spending in March.”