Gen-Z Opps: Gaia's event efforts to pick back up in 2021

Health- and planet-oriented living media producer Gaia experienced a drop in business in 2020, as its execs reported in their most recent earnings call, since the global pandemic led to so many event cancellations. Its spend also dropped dramatically in 2020 due to this. However, since Gaia already has 2021 scheduled events booked, ad spend will likely pick back up this year. The company's existing marketing efforts are seeing traction across the board.

So far this year, Pathmatics reports Gaia has allocated roughly $3.3m toward digital ads, down 33% from the roughly $4.9m it allocated within the same 2020 timeframe. The company's estimated full-year 2020 spend rose by 43% to $18.5m from that of $12.9m in 2019. Gaia has earned around 349.3m digital impressions YTD via Facebook (45%), desktop video (39%) and Instagram (16%) ads. All of this year's desktop video ads have been placed site direct onto youtube.com.

As you can see, the YOY drops in 2020 spend reported in Gaia's latest earnings call is not reflected in its approximated digital ad spend. Due to this fact, I expect its spend increases in this channel to rise YOY in 2021, especially to promote events, even though it's dropped slightly so far this year. This digital spend increase and reliance on Facebook, YouTube and Instagram advertising show that the female-oriented company is particularly targeting Gen-Z. Therefore, Gaia may expand into additional digital channels such as OTT and/or podcast.

Agency & martech readers - Nothing major signals this company will seek new agency partners soon, so seek opportunities elsewhere for now. Gaia currently works with Cactus (creative and media planning AOR), YARD (creative assistance provider) and Moxie Sozo (digital assistance provider).