The effect of the Coronavirus on business has varied by sector. FMCG organisations like P&G have seen a 7% increase in organic sales in the first quarter, whilst automotive manufacturers like Renault and Volkswagen have seen sizable slumps. But are all advertisers adhering to marketing expert, Mark Ritson’s advice of upping their marketing budget and not cutting? Digiday’s Lara O’Reilly examines a cross-section of the biggest advertiser’s Q1 revenue reports and investigates how they are adapting their marketing spend to these interesting times.

The appetite for live sports grows ever stronger during the pandemic and as the lockdown is still enforced, the only sports competition nursing that demand is esports. As more live sports tournaments go digital, it begs the question of whether esports is ready for the potential rush of marketing spend coming their way? With more non-endemic brands, such as Louis Vuitton, Vodafone and most recently BMW, wanting a piece of esports action, marketers are on the hunt to find out more and educate themselves on the opportunities esports can bring.

The IAB started the Connected podcast series in response to the coronavirus pandemic. In this episode, James Chandler, IAB UK’s CMO interviews Dentsu Aegis Network’s Luke Aldridge and they take a look at the opportunities gaming and esports have to offer. Aldridge talks about why advertisers might have been hesitant to invest but braver brands, who adopted a gaming and esports media strategy pre-Covid-19, are reaping the rewards. He also delves into the diversity of the gaming community and discusses how perceptions of the average gamer need to change in order for brands to succeed.

Fortnite developers, Epic Games, last week unveiled the Party Royale mode . The ‘No Sweat. All Chill’ hub allows gamers to enjoy activities such as skydiving, boat races and collecting new cosmetics. Epic said the experimental and evolving space is ‘all about just hanging out and having fun’. To launch this new mode in an appropriate Fortnite fashion, Epic enlisted the help of Deadmau5, Steve Aoki and Francis Dillion to headline the premiere which happened on the 8th of May. The premiere was broadcast a second time on the platform the following day in case gamers missed it the first time around.

In a press release published on ESPN.com on 5th May, ESPN announced that they will be broadcasting live NBA 2K League matches on ESPN2 and the ESPN app for the 2020 season. The matches will be broadcasted to regions outside the US as well. They include the Caribbean, Latin America, Oceania and Sub-Saharan Africa. The broadcast of the NBA 2K League’s remote gameplay is part of ESPN’s wider commitment to bring the sports community together through their #oneteam initiative.

In May’s edition of ‘Inside Xbox’, Xbox showed off gameplay from 13 third party titles for their next-gen console, Series X. The titles included Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, EA’s Madden NFL 21, Sega’s Yakuza: Like a Dragon and Codemasters’ DIRT 5. Within the 13 titles, 9 of them will support Smart Delivery (Xbox’s cross-platform programme). As for the other 4, Xbox did not confirm whether they were Series X exclusives or whether the game developers simply aren’t supporting Smart Delivery, meaning gamers will have to buy the title twice if they want to play on both Xbox One and Series X.

Bidstack CEO, James Draper, spoke to Business Cloud’s Alistair Hardaker to talk about the uptake of in-game advertising, the impact gaming has had on society and in-game advertising can be used to increase realistic features of the game. Draper also talks about how Bidstack, together with their publisher partners have used their native in-game platform to help broadcast public health and safety messages to gamers during the Coronavirus lockdown.