The year 2020 was not a normal one in any sense. It changed the way we used to see the world around us. With the ravaging Covid-19 pandemic destroying leaps and bounds, it not only affected our lives but our livelihoods too. Businesses ranging from smaller to larger ones faced difficulties. It was the period when many big firms filed for bankruptcy, but not all was dull and gloomy. Every crisis comes with its share of opportunities too, what matters is how well we are prepared for those challenges or we have a rigid outlook towards our lives and business.
It was always believed that digital marketing was the game of the future and will surely have a big impact over the coming decades. What the Covid pandemic has done is that it has acted as a catalyst and it resulted in almost all companies moving digital, the degree of that movement might vary for sure, but it did happen.
The reason why we are calling 2020 a watershed year is because it has trumpeted all our previous conceptions about marketing and advertising. Mainstream media and television advertising or Newspaper ads were believed to be the major source of attracting consumers, and spending on digital media was considered a luxury. But that is not the case now. We will show you with data how that is the case in the next section.
What should the metric be to consider that digital marketing is booming and is the thing not only of the future but also of the present times. The metric is how many customers are interacting with the digital medium now versus what was the number before the pandemic hit. And the number is astounding!
The average share of customer interactions that were digital before Covid was roughly in the zone of 15-20%. So, every 1 out of 5 customers was interacting digitally and guess what, that figure has climbed up like anything. It has gone up to in the range of 55-60%. That means a three times increase in the number and quantum of customers that are interacting digitally. This signifies how important is to have an effective and strong presence online. Digital marketing is one such tool to understand that.
During the times when various industries and sectors were struggling even to cope with normal day-to-day finances and regular cashflows, few sectors boomed up like anything. The one obvious sector is the Pharmaceutical sector, but the one sector that emerged with flying colours is the Technology sector. There were various reasons behind this phenomenon but one of the chief reasons was their understanding of digital tools. In this blog, we will see through data how there has been a jump in their revenues and will compare the pre-covid and post-Covid scenarios we will also see why and how companies are switching to online applications and are making use of this breakthrough technology to propel their business.
We will be seeing the data for the big 4 as they are called to understand how Covid-19 Pandemic has brought a radical shift. The four companies we are going to analyze are Google, Amazon, Facebook (Now called Meta) and Apple – GAFA as they are popularly called at times.
The parent holding company is Alphabet and Google as they say is omnipotent and omnipresent. We are surrounded by products of Google – be it a search engine, web browsers, Maps, etc. Not only these services are offered by Google but they form the bedrock for many other companies too and many startups rely on their mapping services as the base infrastructure. SO how does Google earn money? It is mainly through advertisement and Google ad-sense is one such powerful tool. In this background, Digital marketing becomes very important.
So what was the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on Google’s performance? We can sense that it must have increased with more online interactions as we saw previously in the Blog, but how much? And if yes, then with what parameter are we to check that it has increased and by how much? We have tried to keep it as simple as possible so that all our readers can comprehend the importance we are trying to highlight. We have selected the parameter of Annual revenue and have chosen 4 calendar years – 2 of them pre-covid and 2 of them post-covid we will compare the data and see how the performance has been.
As far as Google is concerned, the revenue has been pouring in greatly and that has been made possible because of more users being at home and looking for information and videos and everything related to the pandemic ultimately it resulted in more traffic and more business.
In the year 2018, the annual revenue for Google stood at 137 Billion USD. We are taking this number as the base for our further comparison. In the year 2019, this rose to 161 billion USD, showing a year-on-year(YoY) growth rate of 17.5%.
In the first quarter of 2020, covid-19 hit us on a global scale and companies started adapting to the entire gamut of operations so some fluctuations were anticipated. All the employees had to work from home suddenly, and as expected it had an impact. In 2020, the annual revenue of Google came to 182 billion USD, showing a 13% increase over the previous year, this came at a time when other sectors were struggling and firing people from their jobs in anticipation of lesser revenues and as you are seeing, Google posted revenue of more than 182 billion USD. The most critical part is coming now, the year 2021 which will show the real impacts of the pandemic how things started to stabilize a bit and how the increased participation of users and their interactions resulted in. Were they mere interactions or it resulted in growth in revenue too? And it did beyond leaps and bounds.
For the year 2021, Google posted annual revenue of a whopping 258 billion USD, an increase of 41% increase over the year 2020. And just for understanding the nature of growth and to gauge the quantum of the jump, in the year 2018 where the annual revenue was 137 billion USD, it increased to 258 billion USD in 2021, once the pandemic started to settle a bit and that’s an increase of 60% in the revenue numbers. Now, we hope you can appreciate the potential of digital marketing and how that can result in great revenue and benefits.
This is not only limited to Google and it was no outlier, the next we are seeing is Facebook, which is now re-named, Meta.
Meta
Facebook has been one of the most used social media platforms, and now the group owns Instagram and WhatsApp too. Facebook also earns almost all of its revenue through advertisement only, so how was it impacted during covid-19. It will be a nice indicator of how the online traffic that increased resulted in more ad revenue and turn overall revenue for this technology giant based out of the United States.
In 2018, Facebook as it was called then, posted annual revenue of around 56 billion USD. And in 2019, it rose to around 71 billion USD, this was the normal year and in that it showed a promising growth rate of 26%. In 2020, the pandemic’s peak year in terms of impact, it posted annual revenue of 85 billion USD, and as we saw with Google too, the annual YoY growth rate dipped a bit and it was 21%, but the year 2021 was one of the best for Facebook in terms of revenue, at least. The social media giant posted annual revenue of 119 billion USD for the year 2021, and it showed an increase of 38% over the previous year. And when we try to see the performance of Meta as a company from the pre-covid year to the post-covid year, it has risen beyond expectations. Meta has shown an amazing 68% rise in revenue from the year 2018.
Now we know you have your jaw-dropping and is appreciating of the magic of digital marketing. But hold back on your seats, we have 2 major giants to look over – Apple and Amazon.
Apple
Apple as we know it from the times of Steve Jobs – the great marketing genius. Apple is known for its quality products and services and it has been operational in a number of countries ranging across continents. It has a premium segment and let’s see how it has fared in the last 4 years which comprises both pre-covid and post-covid.
In the year 2018, Apple had annual revenue of around 266 billion USD, one of the greatest compared to its peers. Apple is known to be one of the most profitable tech giants in terms of annual revenue it posts. In 2019, due to some hiccups, it went down to 260 billion USD. But since then in the last 2 years of a covid-19 pandemic, it has never looked back, with demands for both PCs and desktops and other devices increasing and companies requiring more devices for their employees working from home and in general too.
In 2020, Apple posted annual revenue of more than 275 billion USD and in 2021, just the last year it rose to 366 billion USD. The results speak for themselves and as they say, when numbers speak, everybody listens. Apple saw an increase in revenue from 266 billion USD to 366 billion USD, an increase of around 100 billion USD with a growth percentage of roughly 40% from 2018.
Amazon
Now the last tech giant which we are looking into is the e-commerce king – Amazon. How has pandemic affected the business and operations of Amazon is interesting to see.
In 2018, Amazon posted annual revenue of 66 billion USD, in 2019 this number rose to 75 billion USD. Now comes the ravaging pandemic, and in the next two years, Amazon posted annual revenue of 105 billion USD in 2020 and 127 billion USD in 2021. The difference is for everyone to see and ponder the difference technology is creating and the business is not as usual as before.
We have seen the difference in the revenue of the big 4 technology giants to understand how the pandemic has created a land shift moment and it can not be random right? If all the big technology giants are doing phenomenally well. So how this is happening, this has happened mainly because of increased traffic over the Internet and not just traffic, the understanding that more traffic can be converted to more engagement and more revenue. There lies the potential of digital marketing as one of the most powerful tools that companies and startups can use to propel themselves in this world of ever-growing opportunities.
