According to an article posted by MediaPost, programmatic data usage was down nearly 20% in Q2 and Q3 of 2020. Some of that is attributed to decreases in spend during Q2 and Q3, as well as a delay in planning efforts, and some campaigns. During this time, 37% of those surveyed said they were also looking into changing their current marketing mix and advertising strategies to better align with what was happening globally.
Many surveyed used these delays to focus on how they could integrate more first-party data usage to rely less on third-party data segments. In fact, 57% of those surveyed said they had already started to increase their usage of first-party data and will continue to do so in Q4 and beyond. Many have also started to invest in more centralized CRM data to incorporate within their advertising strategies. Overall, publishers did see an increase in data usage of about 6%, however that is a significant reduction from the growth of 15.7% in 2018.