Things are much worse at Gannett, parent company of usatoday. Personally, being laid off on March 31! Almost every employee is effected at this time, either furloughed for few hours a week, pay cut or let go !!
Apparently it's us (community college), the state, and grocery stores still buying ads.
For big campaigns - bread and butter for print and web - different story. These are carefully designed in-your-face takeover ads and the brands care much more how they're presented.
The bigger problem is ad sales for newspapers is usually just AdSense backfill or national sales from the parent company. The former is just beer money unless your publication is NYT size, the latter is drying up because there's nobody to sell to!
I don't think we fixed the programmatic part until very recently, if at all.
The advertising system is self balancing on cost per click if each advertiser optimizes it’s spend based on portfolio theory and because of the reverse Dutch auction that Google runs.
With the virus, some advertisers just don’t have anything they can sell right now (cruises, concerts, sporting events). They won’t even be bidding. Others will have things to sell that are in far less demand (cars, restaurants). The decreased demand will drive down cost per click (or adworth as you call it).
I have noticed many companies dive into emails to previous customers. They are also offering deals. This is cheaper than ads.