Covid-19 pandemic has significantly affected online advertising market. The pandemic has changed customers’ shopping behavior by decreasing customer traffic in offline businesses but increasing customers’ online activities that has led to growth of online shopping and advertising. While the outbreak of Covid-19 has sparked growth of online advertising in general, its impact on various industries may not be the same, given the differences in product characteristics and consumer behavior across different products and services. This paper aims to address this question by empirically examining how Covid-19 has affected online search advertising market. First, we examine how Covid-19 has affected the behavior of online users and advertisers, the main stakeholders in the search advertising market, in terms of user traffic and clicks and advertiser bids and payments. Second, we examine if the impacts of Covid-19 on behavior of online users and advertisers would be different in various industries.

• Alex Jiyoung Kim(Sungkyunkwan University, Republic of Korea)
• Jaunghyun Hwang(Sungkyunkwan University, Republic of Korea)
• Kyeonghan Bae(Sungkyunkwan University, Republic of Korea)
• Dongyoung Jeong(Sungkyunkwan University, Republic of Korea)
• Sehyun Lee(Sungkyunkwan University, Republic of Korea)