Traffic increases and vertical tips during COVID-19

Network Traffic increases

ExoClick’s Business Intelligence team has been closely monitoring our network’s traffic since various states of emergency and lockdowns were put into place by different GEOs. Below you can see the served impressions for each week from 9 March to 5 April, week 11 to week 15 of the year. The weekly percentages were calculated by comparing the traffic on our network from 2 to 8 March, week 10 of the year, in each GEO. As you can see impressions increased as the lockdowns took hold.

In this table you can see the week by week percentages in more detail:

* Note Russia introduced a paid stay at home holiday from 23-29 March and on 30 March lockdown

Green figures show when the countries declared a state of emergency followed by lockdown.

Let’s look at the state of the market during lockdown:

• Currently half of the planet is in lockdown, that’s billions of people who are staying at home 24/7, and they are bored! They are all going online searching for things to do and to buy. 
• People living in affluent tier1 countries are either teleworking from home or their Governments are still paying their salaries, which means they have income available to spend.
• They are all consuming content on their devices, looking for news updates on the pandemic and looking for entertainment to escape the unsettling reality.
• There is not much else to do besides look at content so naturally there is an enormous increase in traffic to websites leading to even more ad impressions.

Tips for offers during lockdown 

Go digital

People are reluctant to buy mail order or COD goods because they think they won’t receive their purchase for a long time. So unless you have a fast supply chain that can deliver quickly, switch your offers to digital products.  

Entertainment offers

Everyone is looking for online entertainment so try VoD, Gaming, Gambling, Livecam offers.

Fun with upsells

Online games, sweepstakes and surveys for prizes are also great forms of entertainment for people in lockdown. Our advice is to offer digital products as prizes which could be used as upsells or cross sells, so for example, offer a two day trial to limited content on a VoD site, or some tokens to try out a Livecam product, etc 

Bet on Casino offers

As all group gatherings are banned there are no sporting events to bet on, so we are seeing a switch to Casino offers.

Utilities

Software and utilities for desktop and mobile are in demand as users are constantly consuming on their devices. 

Virtual dating

Many people live alone and dating sites are a great way to combat loneliness by chatting with someone and getting to know them. ExoClick has seen a global increase in dating members area traffic globally, demonstrated in the graph below covering the last 4 weeks:

Dating members area traffic increases

ExoClick’s dating members area traffic comprises of affluent English speaking GEOs and tier 1 European countries.

Conclusion

This crisis is full of opportunities for advertiers and affiliates by pitching the right offer at an increased online target market. Take advantage of the increase in volumes of impressions during this period with your digital offers.