IAB Survey: Most Pubs See Ad Cancellations

Publishers are feeling the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on their ad revenue, AdExchanger reports.

An IAB survey of 200 publishers and sell-side programmatic players found that 70% of the group were revising their Q2 forecasts post-pandemic.

News publishers in particular are disproportionately affected by the coronavirus pandemic, since many brands don’t want to be near coronavirus-related content.

Eighty-eight percent of news publishers reported that buyers asked to cancel campaigns, compared to 70% of all publishers. Eighty-six percent of news publishers fielded requests from buyers to pause campaigns, compared to 70% of publishers overall. And 17% of news publishers said advertisers blacklisting their inventory was preventing them from doing business as usual, compared to 8% of non-news publishers.

Even as sellers face canceled and paused campaigns, they’re still more optimistic than the buyers the IAB surveyed a few weeks ago about how far revenue will fall.

Sellers planned to revise their Q2 digital media forecasts down by 21%, while the buyers in the IAB’s survey expected to spend 33% less on digital media in Q2. Sellers expected traditional media to decline 30%, while buyers put the number at 29%.

The disparity between the projections could mean that sellers don’t have the most up-to-date information, IAB President David Cohen said. “Typically, clients and agencies put together a plan that gets communicated to sellers, so there is a gap in time between when buyers know what’s happening and when sellers are informed.”