Advertising spending in 2020 will likely be down 9.4% and rebound 10.3% next year, S&P reported Tuesday, amending its previous forecasts of 12.4% and 14.2%, respectively. TV ads are doing better than expected, with national advertising not down as steeply as previously feared due to the pandemic, and it's improving quickly with the return of sports programming, the firm said. Local TV ad declines were steep year over year in Q2, in some cases more than 30%, and Q3 has seen steady improvement due to what will likely be record political commercials, it said. Out-of-home entertainment such as movie theaters likely won't recover until a COVID-19 vaccine is broadly available, which could be mid-2021, S&P said.

Some 300 over-the-top video services are operating in the U.S., doubled from 2014, said Parks Associates Tuesday, citing the impact of theater closures due to COVID-19: Six streaming services ceased operations this year vs. one in 2018. “The decision to delay the latest James Bond film No Time to Die hit the theater industry hard, and Disney’s announcement to move the Pixar film Soul to Disney+ shows studios are putting more emphasis on streaming as many theaters remain closed or at limited capacity," said analyst Steve Nason. Disney leveraged its position as a content creator and streaming service by experimenting with different transactional and windowing options, taking Mulan directly to Disney+ in September, he noted. The NBCUniversal-Roku partnership is a “win-win” for both parties, with NBCU able to distribute its content on a leading streaming video platform and Roku getting a “revenue bump” from Peacock's advertising, he said.

Digital commerce equals one in four discretionary dollars of consumer spending, reported Comscore Tuesday, saying the pandemic pushed stores into a new era. Of the 24.2% growth in digital commerce spending in Q2, 16.8% came from desktop PCs, 7.4% from mobile, it said, with mobile at one in three dollars spent since Q3 2019. As mobile web and app experiences improve, consumers are growing increasingly comfortable buying on mobile devices, though growth is moderating at 16% vs. 5% for desktop. Of the $156 billion in e-commerce spending in Q2, $108.2 billion was via desktops, $47.8 billion by mobile.

CEOs entered Q4 “significantly more upbeat” than earlier in 2020, reported The Conference Board Tuesday. Asked about “talent shortages,” nearly two-thirds canvassed Sept. 17-30 anticipated few, if any, problems attracting qualified workers, it said. “Uncertainty around the pandemic -- and its aftermath -- remains a risk to Q4’s newfound optimism.” Hiring plans cooled in Q3, “and the potential for layoffs remained, with one-third of CEOs saying they anticipate reducing their workforce over the next 12 months,” said the board. “Slower economic growth and demand translated into smaller wage gains and potential pay cuts,” with 21% of CEOs foreseeing no increase in their employees’ wages and 5% saying they may reduce wages, it said. “Expectations were that this is temporary, and wages will be on a much better trajectory beyond the next 12 months.” When asked to predict the pandemic’s most important long-term impacts, more than eight in 10 corporate chiefs said accelerating digital transformation would be among COVID-19's “key legacies.”

Logitech CEO Bracken Darrell reinforced the staying power of videoconferencing hardware, mice and keyboards on a Tuesday call, after two strong quarters driven by work from home. “The biggest permanent changes were going to happen anyway,” he said, citing home-based work and education, “video everywhere,” esports and “democratization of content creation.” He predicted continued growth for webcams, video collaboration tools and PC peripherals for home-based workers and the enterprise, predicting a “big middle” of companies that choose a hybrid approach for workers after the pandemic. He expects a period where families set up separate stations for work and schooling, followed by an upgrade cycle. He predicted video calls will replace audio calls and esports viewership will overtake traditional sports. Q2 was Logitech's first quarter with $1 billion in sales, at $1.26 billion for the period ended Sept. 30, a 73% jump from the year-ago quarter. The company raised its FY 2021 outlook. Shares hit a 52-week high Tuesday and closed up 16% at $92.64. Webcams, the top sales growth category, surged 256% to $102 million, followed by video collaboration, then tablet keyboards. Gaming rose 84% to $298 million. In the League of Legends final four tournament last weekend, 110 million people were expected to have watched live, said Darrell.

Comcast, working with Aruba, launched Comcast Business Teleworker VPN to give work-from-home employees a “reliable, high-performance connection” to their corporate network, said the ISP Monday. Enterprises -- including those that otherwise wouldn't have enabled employees to work from home pre-pandemic -- are increasingly adopting remote work initiatives, with 70% planning to continue their teleworking strategies, it said. Thirty percent are challenged by providing the setup, security policies and management of remote connections, which affects employee productivity, adds to IT department workloads and can make businesses vulnerable to cyberattacks, Comcast said.

The “anywhere operations” model will be a top strategic technology trend for 2021 because it will “enable employees everywhere and manage the deployment of business services across distributed infrastructures,” reported Gartner Monday. “It is more than simply working from home or interacting with customers virtually,” it said. “It also delivers unique value-add experiences across five core areas: collaboration and productivity, secure remote access, cloud and edge infrastructure, quantification of the digital experience and automation to support remote operations.” Gartner estimates 40% of organizations “will have applied anywhere operations to deliver optimized and blended virtual and physical customer and employee experiences” by the end of 2023. Chief information officers are “striving to adapt to changing conditions to compose the future business,” it said. “This requires the organizational plasticity to form and reform dynamically.”

COVID-19 is widening the skills gap and raising employee expectations of their employers, an IBM study found. IBM's 2018 research found an estimated 120 million workers in the world's 12 largest economies would need to be “retrained or reskilled” because of artificial intelligence and automation innovations the next three years. “That challenge has only been exacerbated in the midst of the" pandemic. As many executives try to speed their enterprises’ digital transformation, the new report finds “inadequate skills is one of their biggest hurdles.” There’s a “disconnect” in how effectively leaders and employees think companies are “addressing these gaps,” the tech company said. Three-quarters of executives say their employers help them learn the needed skills, compared with 38% of employees who agreed. Eight in 10 executives gave their companies high marks for supporting employees' physical and emotional health; 46% of employees agreed.

Nearly nine in 10 parents are impressed with how quickly their kids pick up new technology, a “beneficial” trait with many school districts transitioning to remote learning for the 2020-21 school year, VTech found. The supplier of electronic learning products for children canvassed 2,000 parents of kids ages 3-12, finding 82% think their offspring will have more tech opportunities than they did growing up, and 78% approve of introducing tech to kids at a young age. Nearly nine in 10 parents think it’s important for their kids to be proficient with tech and agree tech “will shape who their child becomes," said VTech. Some 48% think tech will bolster their kids’ education, and 47% believe it will “help their children in a variety of career paths.”

CTIA urged the FCC to “pause any increase” in federal Lifeline minimum service standards (MSS) until after it releases its Lifeline market report, expected next year. “In the uncertain times created by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Commission can provide certainty to millions of low-income Americans who are relying upon Lifeline supported mobile wireless services to stay connected,” said a filing posted Friday in docket 17-287. There's “overwhelming” consensus in support of a pause, the group said.