Over the course of the pandemic, from mid-March 2020 onwards, e-commerce grew at a pace never before seen. It would be wrong to suggest this was a major shift rather than simply an acceleration of an existing trend, but its impact on the economics of major businesses, and the advertising that helps to drive them, was crucial to the surviving 2020 for many businesses big and small.
The IAB Europe’s chief economist, Daniel Knapp, pulled apart some of the key forces underpinning this accelerated environment, in which the purchase funnel has collapsed and the maths is asking new questions of...