Data shows that e-commerce sites doubled their advertising budgets from mid-February and going into mid-March, as social distancing started to become the new norm for consumers and buying online. E-commerce ad spending jumped from $4.8 million the week of February 17 to $9.6 million the week of March 9. with data showing advertising spent over national TV, print and digital media, websites, Snapchat, YouTube, etc.

Earlier data showed that e-commerce sales for retailers that also physical locations saw an average revenue weekly growth rate increase of 52% and an 8.8% increase in conversion rates between January 1 and February 29. With many merchants reporting e-commerce sales exceeding rates of Black Friday and Cyber Monday levels. This spike in demand has caused supply and fulfillment challenges since China is slowly getting back to their full capacity from January but Amazon suspending their FBA resupply and receiving onyl essential items. And that will probably last for few more weeks and it could lead to slowing of investemt into e-commerce advertisment due to merchants emptying their Amazon stocks. So this spike in e-commerce spending is mostly a result of people spending more time and shopping online in combination with merchants selling their products still in stock. It is probably that starting with April the advertisment spending will go down until resupply becomes available again.