Prior to the pandemic, marketing experts predicted that companies would spend 14.4% more on search ads in 2020. But online search queries dropped early in the pandemic, so marketers didn’t get as much return on investment from paid search ads as they anticipated. Despite the persisting pandemic, however, marketers still expect a 5.9% increase in search ad spending in 2021. Why? Because the pandemic has permanently changed how people shop, emphasizing e-commerce more than ever before and therefore increasing online searches.
