2021 Annual Trends Report

2020 has been an unforgettable year for consumers in North America – especially those in the United States. In addition to the unique changes wrought by COVID-19, 2020 has seen significant political and economic shifts that have impacted consumer behavior and feeling throughout the U.S. 

American consumers have always differed from their global peers in terms of their habits and preferences, and that has definitely been the case in 2020. While others endured extensive lockdowns, Americans still had leeway to visit grocery stores, pick up food from restaurants and even visit certain indoor locations. And, of course, it’s important to look at how trends differed across different parts of the U.S., as each state and county had its own regulations, restrictions and mores.

Still, there is one area in which American consumers are like their global brethren: habits established in 2020 will likely continue well into the next decade. 

Digital consumption overall rose to new heights in North America in 2020. This year, eMarketer expects Americans to spend over seven and half hours on digital media, up over 45 minutes from 2019.

While the bulk of this digital time spent is devoted to mobile devices and apps, the biggest growth has come from the Connected TV space. Between 2019 and 2020, the average amount of time spent watching streaming video through CTV jumped from 39 minutes to 50 minutes. This year, close to half of all time spent watching streaming video content was through CTV.

This is unlikely to be a one-time fluke either. CTV viewing was growing steadily before 2020, but this year is poised to be the time when CTV viewership really takes off. Among the many changes in digital consumption patterns that occurred in the U.S. in 2020, CTV will be one of the longest-lasting trends.

Short-form video will be a long-term trend in North America as well. While the biggest bet made on short-form video content fizzled out in 2020 (Quibi), the demise of Quibi is unlikely to be a harbinger of what’s to come on the video front. After all, YouTube and TikTok, among other channels, are more popular than ever in the U.S. and Canada.

So what can Quibi tell us about the future of short video content in North America? For one, it likely signals the growing importance of content quality. Video length can’t be a differentiator, as it’s now taken as a necessity. And just because a video is short doesn’t mean it can’t be engaging and be widely seen – far from it.

In 2020, Americans spent more than four hours a day on average using mobile devices, according to eMarketer. In comparison, they spent under three hours and 50 minutes watching television.

This changing dynamic can’t be attributed to just 2020 though. In fact, Americans were spending more time using mobile devices than they were watching TV starting in 2019.

This proves that mobile truly has staying power in North America. While the U.S. historically has not been a mobile-led market, 2020 shows that this transformation is well under way.

And as InMobi’s data from 2020 shows, Americans use their mobile devices in a wide variety of ways, including to browse and buy retail items. In the U.S., mobile is clearly now the first screen of the house – and this is unlikely to change anytime soon. 

2020 has been a cataclysmic year for individuals across Asia-Pacific. The region was one of the very first to be hit by the pandemic, leading to swift action taken by different governments. With different regions going into strict lockdowns at various points in the past year, consumers across Asia-Pacific spent significantly less time outside their homes, thereby increasing their digital footprint.

Yet as restrictions began to ease, early adaptation turned into formative consumer behavior. Be it entertainment (gaming, watching movies etc.), shopping, making payments, or connecting with loved ones, Asia-Pacific continued to meet their needs online, especially on mobile.

This clear demand for mobile-first services from consumers paves the way for APAC's super-app race, the only region across the globe that has true skin in the game. Recognizing this shift, some of APAC's largest legacy brands are making significant investments and are wagering on the power of the always-on device to win over the connected consumer.

Over the past decade, increasing globalization, better connectivity, and technological advancements have brought the world closer as a digital, hyperconnected global village. And even during the epoch-shifting pandemic, this hyperconnected global village was in it, together!

India’s monthly active internet user base surged to 639 million by the end of 2020, registering an annual growth of 24%.  During the same period, Southeast Asia accounted for over 400 million Internet users, while over 86.5% of Australia's population is now online. 

Consumers across APAC accounted for 25% of global app downloads across the globe in 2020, making these regions home to some of the most popular and exciting app revolutions, be it short-form video, gaming, or payments.

Asia occupies a unique seat on the world stage as a confluence of Eastern and Western tech media giants.  Be it Snap, TikTok, or Reels, these apps have all enjoyed immense popularity and have been downloaded more than 200 million times in the region alone.

Additionally, homegrown players such as Likee and Roposo are making significant inroads on the world stage. Despite the short nature of these videos, they drive deep engagement with users. The average time spent on short-form apps per user is close to an hour, standing at 52 minutes.

The platforms are built on easy to share snackable content, comfortably lending themselves to virality and cross-pollination among other platforms as well. Recognizing this change in tide, traditional media houses are also rethinking their content strategy to better suit this new world order.

Owing to the pandemic, SEA’s e-commerce economy has majorly accelerated to US $62B in 2020 due to newly formed online habits. On the other hand, India’s e-commerce revenue is expected to jump from US$ 39 billion in 2017 to US$ 120 billion in 2020, growing at the highest annual rate of 51% in the world. Australia on the other hand boasts of an impressive USD 1157 average annual revenue per user (APRU) with over 70% of the nation’s population making online purchases.

The customer journey in Asia-Pacific is not what it used to be: one no longer sees a TV ad, walks into the store, and buys a product. According to a survey conducted using InMobi Pulse, 2 in 3 respondents across Southeast Asia claim to use their mobile to learn about and discover new products, 82% to research and explore, and over 60% to make purchases. Similarly, 63% of respondents in India claim to use their mobile to learn about and discover new products, 77% to research and explore, and 62% to make purchases.  There is one constant in their shopping journey: the mobile to learn, explore, and to buy. 

On top of everything else happening in the world in 2020, marketers in the U.S. also had to deal with a fractured political climate, including from the Presidential election and Black Lives Matter protests over the summer.

U.S. marketers have always had to be flexible in some degree, changing their approach depending on where their audience was located, what they cared about, etc. Throughout the year, the best marketers in North America turned to available data and insights to make high quality real-time decisions. Speed and agility were the name of the game in 2020.

This will continue to be crucially important to marketers in the U.S. over the next few years, as third-party cookies disappear from Google Chrome and as Apple depreciates the IDFA in iOS. Of course, for good marketers, adapting to a variety of challenges has always been the name of the game.

Besides the pandemic, digital marketers were dealt two big blows in 2020: 1) Google announced that it would eliminate third-party cookies on Chrome by 2022 and 2) Apple said they would be making the mobile ad identifier explicitly opt in sometime in 2021. 

This presents major headwinds for digital marketers. Being able to accurately identify key audiences has long been the hallmark of successful digital advertising and marketing. Without these key features, marketers may be left in the dark.

And then there are the legal challenges. The California Consumer Privacy Act technically went into effect in 2020, and then voters later in the year approved the California Privacy Rights Act.

Between both the technical and legal changes to the status quo, digital marketers are in for a bumpy ride in the coming months and years. 

The United States continues to be the dominant programmatic market worldwide, with 82% of all programmatic ad spending on InMobi Exchange coming from the U.S. during the first half of 2020. Remarkably, U.S. in-app programmatic ad spending actually grew 75% between the first half of 2019 and the first six months of 2020.

It’s easy to see why programmatic advertising is increasingly popular in North America. In a crowded, omnichannel marketplace, marketers need to spend their budgets wisely. With programmatic, they are able to target specific segments of consumers in real time through unique data-led insights.

In short, programmatic advertising just works. It’s hard to argue with results.

Over 80% of this programmatic in-app ad spending occurred through open exchange buying in the first half of 2020, with just 17% coming from private marketplace deals. In addition, 79% of all in-app programmatic ad spending went towards banners.

Programmatic video advertising is on the rise in North America, with the U.S. leading the charge. Between the first half of 2019 and the first half of 2020, programmatic in-app video advertising was up 30% in the U.S..

Why is video advertising growing here? Because it’s effective. In the first half of 2020, video ads had an average click-through rate that was 12x greater than for banners.

Mostly, advertisers seem to prefer horizontal video ads over vertical video. During the first six months of 2020, 64% of all programmatic in-app video ads were horizontal. And, horizontal video ads had an average video completion rate that was over 38% higher than the average VCR for vertical videos.

But we don’t expect this trend to last. In the future, expect marketers to produce and develop more vertical video ads that provide a truly mobile-first viewing experience. 

At this stage, pretty much every marketer in the U.S. is a growth marketer. This was especially the case in 2020, as the pandemic upended what was possible and forced both companies and their marketers to make hard choices. When companies are in a tight spot, they need all hands on deck to support the bottom line.

Of course, growth marketing was critical in the North American market long before COVID-19, especially as direct-to-consumer (D2C) selling rose in popularity. But now at the end of 2020, even brands like Hershey’s and Kellogg’s are embracing D2C selling and forging more direct lines of communication with consumers in the name of growth.

Expect this trend to continue apace in North America in the months and years ahead. Once businesses start seeing the light and realize how impactful marketing can be for the business, they’ll be no turning back.

“From an advertiser perspective, it's been really interesting to see how advertisers have changed their behaviors, and how speed and flexibility in the types of data they've been looking for has changed,” Scott Kelliher, Head of Brand Advertising and Partnerships at eBay Ads, recently noted. He added that “marketers are inherently curious about the data.”

This is especially the case in the realm of mobile marketing. 2020 has made marketers go out of their comfort zones and move faster than ever before. But any smart move has to be underpinned by good data. Without it, marketers are basically taking a shot in the dark.

Gathering good mobile-first data will be harder in the future though, as IDFA is depreciated and as CPRA takes effect. But good marketers will adapt and cope in 2021 and beyond, just like they had to in 2020.

In this section, we examine the year that was and discuss key trends that will shape marketing strategies for years to come across both Southeast Asia and India. This rapid shift in consumer behavior has not gone unnoticed by marketers across the region, with several brands now focusing on their Mobile Marketing Maturity (3M). Marketers are setting higher bars for themselves by closely measuring the impact of each marketing activity, as they move from being aspirational to driving actionable mobile marketing strategies. 

While this may be a tough time for marketers not only in the region but across the globe, true innovation is born from adversity. We have observed, from close quarters, as resilient brands have pioneered innovations that enable them to pivot, strategize and execute in the new normal.

First brought to light by BCG, DMM is an organization’s capacity in delivering seamless brand experiences and is characterized by four maturity levels: Nascent, Emerging, Connected, and Multi-moment.

According to an InMobi survey, e-commerce and BFSI segments lead the way when it comes to Digital Marketing Maturity, emerging as the more connected and multi-moment marketing industries.  Yet over close to half of the marketers characterize themselves in the Nascent or Emerging stage, leaving a large room for organizational growth. 

The pandemic has marketers pivoting their plans to be more digitally focused. 87% of marketers will increase their investments in in-app advertising by up to 40% and programmatic buying remains the most efficient channel for marketers to reach and engage audiences in a brand-safe environment. 

Programmatic advertising has witnessed an exponential rise from 55.9% in 2017 to an estimated 72% by 2021. Asia-Pacific and specifically, India are key growth markets for programmatic advertising with an expected 5-year growth of 2X and 3X respectively. The future of programmatic advertising in Asia will be shaped by: 

• Video-on-demand: Users are consuming content on OTT apps through content platforms such as Prime Video, Netflix, True, Pops Worldwide, and Disney+. Advertisers must leverage video platforms to leverage the micro-moments of the consumer journey and design personalized brand interventions.
• Header Bidding: Header bidding, as an ad technology, has evolved from being an unfamiliar concept to a mainstream mechanism over the past few years. Header bidding has both sell-side and buy-side advantages over app inventory that’s mediated through a traditional waterfall model. 
• Supply Path Optimization:  With the extensive fragmentation of the programmatic advertising ecosystem, advertisers often have limited visibility into the costs and ad placements. SPO aims to remove inefficiencies in the programmatic supply chain by eliminating intermediaries. 

The world is amid a technological upheaval with an exponential rise in video viewing on connected devices including smartphones, tablets, and Smart TVs. Despite the consumption explosion, advertisers are yet to master playing to the gallery with mobile video. 

The reason for this is simple. The underlying approach and technology powering video ad experiences on modern devices widely stem from the TV or desktop era. Unlike desktop, users spend 90% of their mobile device time in-app. The inherent nature of mobile devices makes them perfect for delivering immersive video messaging with relevant brand actions to a consumer’s current location and mobile context. By leveraging the combined power of sight, sound, and touch, mobile devices can now deliver personalized ad experiences that allow brands to truly differentiate themselves in a cluttered space.

To succeed in this new age of the digital consumer and crowded app ecosystem, Growth Marketers have two primary weapons in their arsenal: data and their existing customer base. The massive amount of data will need a quantitative aptitude coupled with a deep understanding of user behavior to retain and grow the customer base. 

According to AppsFlyer data, $945M was exposed to app install fraud in APAC in H1 2020 alone. Hence, performance marketers should look to leverage robust fraud protection tools for real-time fraud detection and blocking. 

Peter Drucker is often quoted as saying that “you can't manage what you can't measure.” Performance marketers must invest in the right tools for their marketing tech stack to collect, attribute, and analyze all user activity data across paid and owned channels. This is even more critical in 2021 as performance marketers battle it out to capture the burgeoning digital natives’ mindshare and achieve marketing efficiency.  

In a world that is rapidly evolving, brands are finding it increasingly difficult to keep up with the constantly changing preferences of their consumers.  Even as consumers have struck a balance between the physical and digital world, it has not been the same for brands.

A problem well understood is a problem half-solved. The solution to bridge the widening gap between brands and their consumers is meaningful data across all touchpoints that lead to actionable insights. Brands need to invest in mobile-first AI-powered solutions that access real-time data signals from users and combine them to provide out-of-the-box analytics.

To gather actionable consumer insights from time to time, brands must invest in a sustainable approach. Using a mobile-first platform, brands can stay in touch with the evolving consumer needs by capturing the real voice of the customer. The mobile is the ultimate means to understand and identifying prospective customers while shaping how to engage and acquire them. 

2020 has been a year for the ages for just about every industry across the United States and Canada. Considering the pace at which change occurred in 2020, it’s useful for every industry to take a step back and really take stock of what happened – and what’s to come. What trends from 2020 are likely to stick around versus what will be an aberration? 

For different industries, the answers vary.

According to eMarketer, there are close to 155 million smartphone gaming app users in the U.S. This means that over 46% of all Americans are mobile gamers. And there is still room for this space to grow in the U.S. By 2024, eMarketer predicts that there will be more than 163 million smartphone gaming app users in the country.

For advertisers, this audience is now simply too big to ignore. Not only is the smartphone gaming audience growing rapidly still, but InMobi’s research definitively shows that it is far more diverse than some might think – most casual mobile gamers are women over the age of 25. Going forward, mobile gaming will continue to dominate the app charts. Like their global peers, Americans love playing games on their mobile devices, and this trend will definitely continue throughout the decade to come.

What a difference a year makes. Back in late 2019, Vinny Rinaldi, Head of Addressable Media and Technology at The Hershey Company, said that they were unlikely to embrace e-commerce and consumer-direct shipping anytime soon. After all, chocolate easily melts in transit, making it a difficult item to ship.

And then COVID-19 hit. As their in-store sales dipped as a result of the pandemic, they made up for this loss by further embracing online sales. The second half of 2020 even saw them partner with retailers like Walmart to provide additional online shopping options to consumers.

While e-commerce may not have been part of the Hershey’s initial 2020 plan, it will likely be a part of their 2021 plans – and they’re far from alone in this pivot. Going forward, expect more CPG brands in North America to embrace DTC shopping options, as habits formed in 2020 calcify.

Unlike in some other parts of the world, e-commerce and online delivery were still available options to Americans throughout 2020. This helps to explain why shoppers in the U.S., perhaps more than anyone else, really embraced e-commerce this year. In fact, according to research conducted by IBM, “the pandemic has accelerated the shift away from physical stores to digital shopping by roughly five years.”

Another interesting shift in the North American retail landscape has been the rise of BOPIS: buy online, pick up in store. Many consumers have embraced this buying model in 2020, as it provides the ease of e-commerce without any of the shopping hassles. Target invested in improving their BOPIS infrastructure in 2019, and this move helped them quickly capitalize as shopping trends and preferences shifted in 2020.

One of the defining characteristics of the entertainment landscape now in North America is just how crowded the market has become. Case in point here is Quibi, which started and ended in 2020 despite its cache of starts, immense budget and pedigreed founders. In fairness to Quibi, however, even established sports leagues like the NBA had trouble generating significant viewership in 2020 as a result of pandemic-related delays and the attention-sucking vortex that was the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election.

Over the next few years, as Americans begin to return to some sense of normalcy, what habits from 2020 will stick? For one, connected television (CTV) viewing is here to stay. As we’ve noted previously, between 2019 and 2020, the average amount of time spent watching streaming video through CTV jumped from 39 minutes to 50 minutes, according to eMarketer. This year, close to half of all time spent watching streaming video content was through CTV. 

While consumers across the U.S. have been using delivery services at a rapid clip in 2020 for retail and restaurant meals just like others across the world, what’s unique about North American consumers in particular has been the rise of food and grocery delivery. As InMobi’s research has consistently shown this year, consumers in the U.S. have been flocking to services like Instacart, Shipt and Drizly in near-record numbers since March.

Supermarkets went all-in on this trend in 2020, with Walmart rolling out a new app and brands like Kroger and Safeway seeing more app installs than ever before. 

2020 also brought renewed life to the delivered meal kit space. Services like Blue Apron appeared to be on their last legs in 2019, but then COVID-19 hit and these services saw a rush of new subscribers.

Will this trend actually last though? Only time will tell.

As consumers across Asia made dramatic shifts in their behavior, different industries responded differently. And one truth has emerged: mobile is the anchor for both consumers and brands in this sea of the unknown. Several brands have pivoted admirably to meet their consumers where they are – be it embracing m-commerce, building click to mortar capabilities, or creating custom mobile experiences, brands have prioritized the needs of their consumers above all. 

Industries have had to consider several options as they prioritized the needs of their consumers. Be it going direct to consumer, embracing online to offline experiences, leveraging first party data at scale, or creating custom cross device strategies, there is a unique solution that exists for each brand as we move into the next era of marketing and advertising. 

In 2020, the gaming industry is at the forefront of entertainment, growing a lightening pace, with 4.7 billion gamers across the world. Gaming has witnessed a great revolution with the advent of smartphones, mobile gaming now accounts for over 48% of overall revenues, quashing both console and PC gaming.  

To start with, smartphones have proven to be a low barrier - 89% of India’s gamers are on mobile with a 20.3% growth year on year.  Gaming is a burgeoning category that is democratized and propelled by mobile. The typical profile of the Asian gamer has shifted over the years to represent people with diverse backgrounds and a variety of interests. With the dominance of premium publishers, such as the SEA group (formerly known as Garena), mobile is poised to account for 69.4% of all gaming revenue in Southeast Asia. Australia as a market has been an early adopter of all things gaming. In fact, two-thirds of Australians play video games every day. Similar to other markets this gaming boom has largely been led by mobile, with over 70% of gamers playing on their smartphones. 

CPG brands have been at forefront at some of the most innovative mobile-first solutions this year. A great illustration of this came to life when Unilever was looking to launch a liquid detergent brand, Breeze in the Philippines. Unilever leveraged InMobi Pulse to survey more than 11,500 consumers to understand their category preferences, usage and key barriers to adopting liquid detergents.

Unilever clustered its prospective customers in to three segments of non-liquid detergent buyers and designed personalized communication accordingly. The personalization at scale saw a marked effect on customer purchase patterns. With 1 in 3 consumers who saw the ad stating their intent to purchase Breeze, the brand witnessed a YoY turnover uplift of 30.3% in September 2019 and 24.8% in October 2019.

Mobile Shopping during COVID-19 surpassed holiday shopping levels. E-commerce boomed in H1 2020, achieving growth that normally would have taken between 4 to 6 years - and mobile has been central to this growth. According to BCG, e-commerce transactions in India in 2020 grew by 17% as compared to the pre-lockdown order volume and around 20 of new users were added to the category of online shoppers during the lockdown. Not only did more people start shopping online, but existing customers increased their online spending by 45%.

In today's world, brands must create a unified and seamless consumer experience across both online and offline channels to connect with their consumers and create a sustainable relationship. According to our recent study on Marketing in the New Normal, delivering an omnichannel experience is the biggest priority for marketers across India. This omnichannel mindset provides customers with the much-needed choice and freedom to interact with the brand from the touchpoints they prefer.

OTT platforms cut through the limitations of linear TV to bring immediately accessible content for audiences in a manner most convenient to them: Anytime, anywhere! There has been a steady increase in the consumption of OTT content across Asia-Pacific, driven by access to high-speed internet and broadband services. Local content and event-based reality TV, especially, have enjoyed immense popularity during the lockdown. 

InMobi witnessed a 286% growth in usage on OTT apps on mobile in Southeast Asia, from the start of the year to April, which was when most countries in the region went into lockdown. This is an opportunity that advertisers across the board are excited about. There has been a 10X increase in advertising spends, signifying the importance of the OTT opportunity to advertisers. After all, the engagement, placement, measurement, and interaction offered by the medium is not easily replicated. OTT players can set themselves apart in the eyes of advertisers by layering deep audience insights with their media proposition. 

As Asia-Pacific went into a severe lockdown in 2020 and with people sheltered at home, hyper-local delivery services played a critical role in catering to the essential needs of individuals and households. According to data on Microsoft Search, Indians increased their search for grocery e-commerce by 161% between April-July 2020 when compared to the same period last year. Online food delivery searches spiked by over 600% while online pharmacy delivery searches surged by 570% during the same period. 

Southeast Asian and Australian consumers on the other hand were open to using food delivery apps especially as stay-at-home orders surged. Indonesia tracked the highest growth of 60% in average weekly sessions in Food & Drink Apps. Given that the region now has a bustling delivery ecosystem through apps such as Deliveroo, Dunzo, Grab and Gojek, hyperlocal delivery services powered by mobile-first brands will remain a mainstay in the way individuals access goods and services.