How Covid-19 Supercharged An Advertising ‘Triopoly’

When the pandemic upended the economy last year, companies took a hard look at their advertising plans.

Oreos maker Mondelez International Inc. shifted money meant for TV commercials during March Madness basketball and the summer Olympics into digital platforms. A hefty chunk went to Alphabet Inc.’s Google, which offered data on what locked-down snack lovers were searching for.

Athleisure company Vuori Inc. more than tripled its spending on Facebook Inc., spotting a chance to juice sales of its sweatpants to people stuck at home. Office-furniture maker Steelcase Inc. built an operation to sell directly to workers and advertised aggressively on Amazon.com Inc.

The Big Three of digital advertising—Google, Facebook and Amazon—already dominated that sector going into 2020. The pandemic pushed them into command of the entire advertising economy. According to a provisional analysis by ad agency GroupM, the three tech titans for the first time collected the majority of all ad spending in the U.S. last year.

Beneath the shift are changes driven by the pandemic: more time spent on computer screens; more e-commerce; a jump in new-business formation, and a steady improvement in tech giants’ ability to demonstrate a return on ad investment.

Success breeds success for what some call the “triopoly.” The increase in shopping and spending on Google, Facebook and Amazon’s platforms is adding to their already voluminous data on users, giving them even more appeal for advertisers that look to target their messages.

“These companies that are data-science-driven get stronger and faster with a tailwind of usage—and Covid was a hurricane,” said ad-industry veteran Tim Armstrong, a former Google executive and AOL CEO who now leads Flowcode, a direct-to-consumer platform company.

Many of the pandemic-driven changes likely are here to stay, say advertisers and ad forecasters. Still, when the pandemic winds down, it’s far from certain the tech giants will continue to increase their market share gains at this rate. With the vaccine rollout and easing of lockdowns, consumers could spend less time and money online and marketers could diversify their spending.

The growth in online advertising last year came as every other kind of ad spending shrank, with double-digit declines in television, newspapers and billboards, according to GroupM. And those online gains flowed heavily to the tech giants rather than to digital media sites and publishers that sell online ads.

The triopoly increased their share of the U.S. digital-ad market from 80% in 2019 to a range approaching 90% in 2020, GroupM estimates. It’s a surge that comes as the three face scrutiny and litigation from various agencies at home and abroad over their dominance.

Google, in announcing plans to tweak its tools that help publishers and advertisers buy and sell ads, is moving away from targeting ads based on individuals’ browsing activity across the web. But that shift might wind up further strengthening Google’s grip on the online-ad industry, some experts and rivals say, because it could boost the value of the data flowing through Google properties such as Search and YouTube.

Amazon this week said it will begin streaming Thursday Night Football by 2023, giving the company a high-profile franchise to take in ad dollars normally spent on TV broadcasters.

The three giants aren’t collecting just the money spent to advertise in the media but also some of the marketing dollars earmarked for coupons, catalogues and in-store promotions.

“They are not media companies anymore, they are marketing mongrels,” said Rishad Tobaccowala, a senior adviser to ad giant Publicis Groupe SA.

New-business applications in the U.S., which slowly climbed from 200,000 a month to 300,000 over a decade, shot up north of 500,000 in July and averaged more than 400,000 a month for the second half of 2020, according to the U.S. Census data. This proved a boon for the biggest tech platforms, which provide the kind of advertising that is often all a startup can afford. Facebook says it had more than 10 million active advertisers in the third quarter, up from 8 million in January.

Meanwhile, many businesses of all sizes pivoted to e-commerce selling—and turned to digital ads to support that effort.

Before the pandemic, a little more than 10% of retail purchases in the U.S.took place online. That jumped to 16% in last year’s second quarter when lockdowns peaked, according to Census data. Though the rate tapered a bit as the year wore on, the trend strongly benefits the tech behemoths.

“The pandemic zapped us two years into the future on the e-commerce side,” said Nicole Perrin, principal analyst at research firm eMarketer.

Mondelez, the Chicago-based maker of Oreo, Ritz and other snacks, in 2020 geared up to promote some of its brands in the marquee television events of the NCAA college basketball tournament and the Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo. When it became clear neither would be held, Mondelez redeployed the money to digital advertising.

It doubled down on Google ads to capitalize on interest in online recipes among those homebound. It used Facebook-owned Instagram to host a Pictionary-like game in which an artist made images out of the cream in the middle of an Oreo cookie. For the first time, Mondelez spent more on digital ads than on TV commercials last year. Google and Facebook were the biggest beneficiaries.

This year, digital advertising is projected to account for more than half the roughly $1.1 billion Mondelez spends on media world-wide. It was only about 30% as recently as 2017. TV’s share of the company’s ad spending continues to decline.

When Mondelez invests in digital advertising, it gets a 25% better return than with TV ads, the company says. It has found that its Google and Facebook ads do especially well, generating 40% higher returns than an average digital ad. The two now account for roughly 60% to 70% of Mondelez’s digital ad spending, up from less than 50% in 2017, the company says.

The tech giants share data that allows Mondelez to understand its customers better, said the snack maker’s chief marketing officer, Martin Renaud. Google data showed Mondelez, for instance, that people tend to search the internet for healthier snacks in the morning and for more-indulgent treats as the day wears on.

When the pandemic struck, Google provided updated data that helped Mondelez craft relevant ads. The company switched from showing college-age consumers an ad about eating lunch in the library to one that read: “Made it through an online class? Treat yourself.”

Mondelez has been working with Google and Target Corp. to figure out how likely someone is to buy Oreos or Ritz crackers from Target stores after being served ads for them on Google’s YouTube.

“I can’t go to CNN or other platforms and be able to get that intelligence,” said Jonathan Halvorson, Mondelez’s global vice president of consumer experience. Big advertisers like Mondelez still spend a lot on TV commercials, and most consider TV the best way to reach a mass audience, rather than any particular segment of consumers.

As it directs more ad money to the tech giants, Mondelez isn’t working with as many digital publishers in the U.S. In 2017, Mondelez worked with about 150; it now works with fewer than 10.

For direct-to-consumer businesses, the pandemic provided an opportunity like no other.

Activewear company Vuori distributes through stores, but its main focus is selling via catalogues and the web. Facebook is a key part of its strategy. Besides enabling Vuori to monitor the performance of its ads, the platform’s tools let Vuori upload lists of its customers and then use Facebook’s algorithm to find look-alike audiences, testing and pivoting in real-time.

When the pandemic arrived, Vuori CEO Joe Kudla noticed something interesting in the data: The prices of Facebook’s ads were dropping at the same time as people were clicking at higher rates on Vuori ads for items like its $80 sweatpants. That combination sent its return on ad spending through the roof.

Vuori stopped traditional marketing such as catalogues and direct mail and shovelled every dollar it could into Facebook. It doubled its April 2020 media spending from what was budgeted and saw sales quadruple. Facebook’s ad prices have since recovered, and Vuori has diversified its ad spending somewhat, but it has continued to increase its use of Facebook ads.

A surfer and yoga practitioner, Mr Kudla seeks to create products for people with the kind of active lifestyle he and his friends in Encinitas, Calif., have. But for finding customers, he says, Facebook beats his instincts.

“We could identify the age, demo and behaviour, but ultimately the algorithm is much more powerful in terms of identifying people who demonstrate certain shopping behaviours,” Mr Kudla said.

Performance-obsessed small advertisers such as Vuori are the reason Facebook revenue never stopped growing last year, despite the pandemic’s hit to the economy and then a summer boycott by some prominent advertisers over the platform’s handling of hate speech and misinformation.

In the three years leading up to the pandemic, Suzy Batiz, founder of the toilet spray company Poo-Pourri, was focused mainly on building out the network of retail stores that carried what it calls a “before-you-go” spritz of essential oils.

Then Covid-19 hit, and one distributor refused to take a multimillion-dollar order already produced. “That was pretty painful,” Ms Batiz said. “But as one of my mentors would say, crisis precedes transformation.” The company shifted focus from driving customers to stores to driving them to its e-commerce site and others’ shopping sites.

That meant cutting all marketing spending that wasn’t digital, such as payment for placement at Bed Bath & Beyond stores or for promotional events. Ms Batiz redirected the money to the web, especially Facebook. Sales on Poo-Pourri’s website surged 300% in the second quarter versus a year earlier and more than doubled for the year.

“This is our future,” Ms Batiz said. “I don’t think we will ever go back.”

Steelcase, which makes desks and other office furniture, spent roughly $1 million on advertising in 2019, primarily for print and digital ads in business publications to target facility managers, architects, developers and company executives. Most of its revenue came in direct sales to corporations or from its dealer network, which has showrooms around the country. Its business of direct selling to consumers was minuscule.

As states’ stay-home orders spurred an exodus from offices last spring, Steelcase’s sales plunged. The Grand Rapids, Mich., company ramped up its small direct-to-consumer business, increasing its staff for that to 25 people from two.

It stopped advertising in business publications and began buying search and social-media ads. Steelcase radically increased its ad budget last year and spent $5 million to $6 million on digital ads targeting people setting up home offices. About half of that went to Amazon search ads.

“Everyone focused on Amazon, whether you needed toilet paper, spices, a Cuisinart mixer or an office chair,” said Allan Smith, the furniture maker’s vice president of global marketing. “We decided to shift there as well, and it paid off.”

For every dollar Steelcase spent on Amazon ads during the holiday season, it made $30 in sales, the company says. Sales for its business aimed at consumers are up 500%.

Steelcase plans to double its Amazon spending this year. Its research indicates the pandemic has changed work-life for good, predicting that about 72% of businesses are likely to take a hybrid approach of working from both home and office. “The hybrid future is here to stay,” Mr Smith said.

While golden visa schemes proliferate, Switzerland remains famously protective about buying property in the country.

Rules known as Lex Koller, introduced in 1983, prohibit foreigners from buying homes in cities like Geneva and Zurich. And in the few locations where foreigners can buy, purchase permits come with rules around size and occupancy.

But non-Swiss buyers who have coveted an Alpine home now have a pathway to ownership, and it’s likely to come with financial upside. The Swiss government has waived residency requirements in a handful of locations where developers have negotiated exemptions in exchange for billions of dollars of investment in construction and improvements.

Andermatt, a village 4,715 feet above sea level in the centre of the Swiss Alps, is the largest municipality to open up to foreign buyers.

Its main investor, Egyptian magnate Samih Sawiris, “believed Andermatt could become a full-town redevelopment when he first visited in 2005, but the key was to offer real estate to people outside of Switzerland,” said Russell Collins, chief commercial officer of Andermatt-Swiss Alps, Sawiris’s development company.

“We became the only large-scale real estate development in Switzerland with an exemption from the Lex Koller regulations.”

In the ensuing decades, Andermatt has become a major draw for high-net-worth buyers from around the world, said Alex Koch de Gooreynd, a partner at Knight Frank in London and head of its Swiss residential sales team.

“What the Andermatt-Swiss Alps guys have done is incredible,” he said. “It’s an impressive resort, and there is still a good 10 years’ worth of construction to come. The future of the resort is very good.”

Andermatt’s profile got another boost from the 2022 acquisition of its ski and resort operations by Vail Resorts, which runs 41 ski destinations worldwide.

“Vail has committed to 150 million Swiss francs (US$175 million) in investments, which is another game-changer,” de Gooreynd said.

“If you’d asked me about Andermatt 10 years ago, I would have said the ski areas weren’t good enough of a draw.”

Along with the five-star Chedi Andermatt hotel and residences, which opened in 2013, residential offerings include the Gotthard Residences at the Radisson Blu hotel; at least six branded residences are planned to open by 2030, according to Jeremy Rollason, director for France, Switzerland, and Austria at Savills Ski.

“Most of these are niche, boutique buildings with anywhere from eight to 14 units, and they’re releasing them selectively to create interest and demand, which has been a very successful approach,” he said.

“Andermatt is an emerging destination, and an intelligent buy. Many buyers haven’t heard of it, but it’s about building a brand to the level of Verbier, Courchevel or Gstaad.”

The Alpinist, Andermatt’s third hotel residence, is slated to open in 2027; with 164 apartments, the five-star project will be run by Andermatt-Swiss Alps, according to Collins.

Other developments include Tova, an 18-unit project designed by Norwegian architects Snohetta, and La Foret, an 18-apartment building conceived by Swiss architects Brandenberger Kloter.

Prices in Andermatt’s new buildings range from around 1.35 million francs for a one-bedroom apartment to as much as 3.5 million francs for a two-bedroom unit, according to Astrid Josuran, an agent with Zurich Sotheby’s International Realty.

Penthouses with four or more bedrooms average 5 million-6 million francs. “Property values have been increasing steadily, with an average annual growth rate of 7.7% in the last 10 years,” she said.

“New developments will continue for the next 10 years, after which supply will be limited.”

Foreign buyers can obtain mortgages from Swiss banks, where current rates hover around 1.5% “and are declining,” Josuran said.

Compared to other countries with Alpine resorts, Switzerland also offers tax advantages, said Rollason of Savills. “France has a wealth tax on property wealth, which can become quite penal if you own $4 million or $5 million worth of property,” he said.

Andermatt’s high-end lifestyle has enhanced its appeal, said Collins of Andermatt-Swiss Alps.

“We have three Michelin-starred restaurants, and we want to create a culinary hub here,” he said. “We’ve redeveloped the main shopping promenade, Furkagasse, with 20 new retail and culinary outlets.

And there is a unique international community developing. While half our owners are Swiss, we have British, Italian and German buyers, and we are seeing inquiries from the U.S.”

But Andermatt is not the only Swiss location to cut red tape for foreign buyers.

The much smaller Samnaun resort, between Davos and Innsbruck, Austria, “is zoned so we can sell to foreigners,” said Thomas Joyce of Alpine property specialist Pure International.

“It’s high-altitude, with good restaurants and offers low property taxes of the Graubunden canton where it’s located.”

At the Edge, a new 22-apartment project by a Dutch developer, prices range from 12,000-13,500 francs per square metre, he said.

As Andermatt’s stature grows, this is a strategic time for foreigners to invest, said Josuran of Sotheby’s.

“It might be under the radar now, but it’s rapidly growing, and already among Switzerland’s most attractive ski locations,” she said. “Now’s the time to buy, before it reaches the status of a St. Moritz or Zermatt.”

How Covid-19 Supercharged An Advertising ‘Triopoly’

Google, Facebook and Amazon collect more than half of all ad dollars spent in the U.S.

The government in Switzerland has waived residency requirements in a handful of locations, including one that’s growing fast.