Hawke Media Special Report: April 22, 2021

The US has reached a positive milestone that brightens the outlook for the country’s post-COVID future. Within President Biden’s first 100 days (92 days to be exact) in office, the US has administered 200 million vaccines to Americans who want to put the pandemic behind them.

To put that number into perspective, nearly half of all US adults have been at least partially vaccinated. The US is administering vaccines at a rate of 28 million doses a week, which seems like a staggeringly efficient rollout.

Now, Biden is offering small businesses a tax credit of $511 per day, per employee to let US workers at companies with less than 500 employees who want to get the vaccine to take the time off of work to get it.

Consumer Trends

Sustainability

Source: EcoCart

Source: PWC

• Sustainability is increasingly becoming a major buying factor when shoppers consider which brands to buy from and which brands to keep buying from.
• In two separate surveys, 87% of respondents reported being more likely to buy from companies with ethical and sustainable practices, and over half reported actually buying from companies with a focus on environmental protection.

Social Media Usage by Age Group

Source: GWI

• The largest concentration of internet users congregate on Facebook, across most age groups except for Gen Z, who favor Instagram and have adopted Snapchat in higher numbers.

Virtual and Augmented Reality

Source: eMarketer

• Nearly 93.3 million (28.1% of the US population) will use AR at least once per month in 2021.

Business Trends

Pandemic Closures

• Of the nearly 600,000 businesses that typically come and go in a year, the pandemic influenced an additional ~200,000, which is far less than projections according to a Federal Reserve report.
• While the business impact of the pandemic isn’t over, it’s hopeful seeing the impact wasn’t as severe as expected.

Payment Types

Source: ACI Worldwide

• Electronic payments are set to continue growing in use over cash payments with nearly 80% of transactions being electronic by 2025, and real-time payments set to increase by 400%.

ROAS

Source: Retail Touch Points

• According to an analysis of hundreds of advertisers across Amazon ad campaigns, “ROAS saw a modest decline in Q1 2021, with Sponsored Product ROAS down 8% quarter-over-quarter and 6% year-over-year. Sponsored Brand ROAS was down 7% quarter-over-quarter and 12% year-over-year.”