In its latest crisis response tracker, the WFA said that 54% of respondents are no longer deferring campaigns, and positivity about the current advertising environment had increased from 8% in June 2020 to 21% in September.

However, actual spending on advertising was still lower than planned, with only online display advertising (up 6%) and online video advertising ( 9%) seeing increases.

The tracker is based on the views of senior executives at 35 major advertisers, and the research was carried out between 17th and 27th September.

Television, out-of-home and point of sale were all rising from historic lows in the first half of the year, the tracker found.

Television was down 25% for quarters one to three compared with planned spend, but better than the 33% fall registered in the first half of 2020.

Out-of-home advertising was 39% down on planned spend, but better than the first half figures of 49%, and point of sale is down 20% compared with a 23% fall in the first half of 2020.

Influencer marketing had an 11% fall in the first three quarters of 2020, compared with a 22% drop in the first six months of the year.

Events were the worst hit, declining 60% across the first three quarters of the year compared with 56% for the first six months. Radio also saw a reduction in spending, down 35% for the first three quarters of 2020 compared with a decline of 25% for the first half.

Respondents to the tracker said they had this year made a full transition to channel-agnostic video planning, boosted their focus on ecommerce, run more virtual and digital marketing activities and influencer events, and rebalanced investments between experiential and digital.

Stephan Loerke, chief executive of the WFA, said: “We are starting to see some green shoots of recovery with more than half our members no longer holding their campaigns back as a result of the pandemic.

“There is still a lot of uncertainty though and it’s unlikely we’ll be moving to ‘business as usual’ anytime soon. We are also seeing an acceleration of the shift to digital channels but it remains to be seen if this will be permanent.”