Our forecast for digital video viewers in Canada highlights greater consumption of the medium during the pandemic.

What has been dubbed the “streaming wars” in many markets—especially in the US—is more like a skirmish in Canada. Despite the influx of US-based services like Disney+ and Apple TV+ in the past year, and the presence of homegrown services like Bell Media’s Crave nationally and Vidéotron’s Club Illico in Quebec, Netflix is still by far the most popular subscription OTT service in Canada.

Even before COVID-19 caused a spike in TV time in Canada, TV continued to be a strong medium of choice. But amid stay-at-home measures, consumers turned to a blend of TV and digital video for long-form content.

After a challenging 2020, which saw big shifts in how digital media was consumed and how marketing adapted, we anticipate five developments will have a lasting impact on Canada’s digital economy.

Digital video viewership in Canada is among the highest in the world, driven by high usage of YouTube and Netflix.

Canada trails only Japan worldwide across a variety of Twitter penetration metrics: About one-fifth of the population (22.1%), a quarter of internet users (25.0%), and more than a third (35.2%) of social network users in Canada use Twitter. Compared with the US, Twitter adoption in Canada is significantly higher.