UK August 5

As the delta variant of COVID-19 has spread in recent weeks, some of the headway of a return to normalcy is rolling back out of necessary caution. However, despite the potential uncertainty of the next few weeks and months due to the variant, marketers and agency execs aren’t pressing pause on advertising as they did when the pandemic began. “‘Flexible’ is now a tenet for any plan, for the next few months or for a multi-year approach,” said Kari Shimmel, chief strategy officer at Campbell Ewald. Read more below.

• The focus on flexibility that has been built into ad deals as well as ad strategies over the last year-and-a-half has remained, making it easier for marketers and agency execs to adjust on the fly as consumer sentiment changes.
• For sites that get less than 10 million page views per month, traffic hasn’t just fallen from 2020 highs. In many cases, it’s fallen below where it was in 2019.
• In this week’s Digiday+ Media Briefing, publishing reporter Sara Guaglione looks at how the Delta variant is complicating media companies’ office return plans and employees’ preparations for exiting work-from-home life.
• The size of Roku’s audience now tops 55.1 million active accounts, and its quarterly platform revenue has surpassed $500 million.