The economic impact of the coronavirus crisis on the advertising industry has laid bare the ugly truth of ad tech: that many in the ad-tech ecosystem were media resellers, despite positioning themselves as tech companies. We all know why this is:  source AdWeek

It turns out that the digital advertising industry has two problems. 

The one you’ve probably heard more about is simply loss of budgets          . 

The other being the continued rise of ad blockers, ad skipping and the impact on GDPR.

With large segments of the worlds economy basically shut down, there is little reason for airlines, hoteliers, casinos, retailers, auto makers, film studios, or restaurants to advertise at the same pace. And small businesses are more focused on meeting payroll and staying alive than on advertising and marketing.

Retail has always had to work hard at getting people through the doors, this is equally true for all online retailers. In particular with the rise of 'social commerce' which is diverting traffic that would at one time have gone to your website, or that 'marketplace' you chose to sell your goods through and they kept the customer.

Today's digitally savvy and not so loyal consumer are firmly in the driving seat, it's they who get to choose when, where, and how they interact with us. 

So if you're still stuck in a mindset that is saying 'let's incrementally improve' or continue with your advertise and promote strategy then your simply kicking the can down the social strategy road.

It's a 'holistic' world for consumers, so all companies have to think 'holistically' or die.

China leads in the area of 'Social Commerce' way ahead of all of Facebook's acquisitions and so called innovations. If this is fact do you and your team have an in-house working group who are really looking at what 'social media and social commerce' is other than something to just post your latest 'offer' or 'promotion' -have you considered that this crisis might just have accelerated the continued growth that is today's customer or supplier could be tomorrow's competitor?

As the marketing industry grows increasingly digital, this crisis has forced brands, companies and leadership teams to reimagine what the role of covid disruption has meant to the business of tomorrow.

The demands and expectations of CMOs continue to evolve at an accelerated rate.

From what we can evidence prior to this crisis it seemed that CMO's and marketing teams simply became the digital bullhorn of the company. 

Instead of being the marketing leaders that helped identify new markets and product development opportunities it seems they spent most of the time blowing large ad spend budgets and spewing creative vomit to feed the fraud ridden ad-tech platform frenzy. 

These are the sausage machine platforms that enabled brands to get those  spammy adverts into the digital ecosystem at lightning speed with something that simply resulted in advertising blizzards, and managed to piss us all off. 

CMO's became the ad-tech servants and ad-tech became the master with the consumer paying the CX price.

Pre Covid CMOs were required to focus on being customer-centric and data-driven while offering personalised communication strategies. They were also being called on more to prove ROI on campaigns. 

CEOs are now expecting CMOs to be a "magic bullet" that can revive sales, grow market share and inspire customers. These many, varied demands are often impossible for CMOs to meet, leading to increasingly shorter tenures.

So, does this crisis now set the scene for the CMO to get back to what they're supposed to do which is to focus on growth, innovation, and product development?

Or, just like the global 'Live Aid' concert of the 1980's that got people to dig deep and think about those less fortunate but after the buzz and excitement of the concerts they returned to life as is.

Are you now asking the biggest business imperative question which is "will the post Covid-19 world of business slowly return back to life as was, or is this an opportunity to stop and think about how we might do things differently"?