In 2020, digital video ad spending exceeded TV ad outlays for the first time in Canada. Digital video gained the most momentum of any format amid the pandemic last year, growing by 10.0% year over year (YoY). This includes both in-stream video formats (e.g., YouTube ads) and those outstream (ads appearing in social media feeds).

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

Average daily time spent with media shot past the 10-hour mark last year, pushing media consumption to new levels in Canada.

This report summarizes our forecasts for nine countries—the US, Canada, France, Germany, the UK, China, India, Japan, and South Korea—and offers comparative analyses of the major time spent numbers for each.

One reason is that Canada and the US are not mobile-first economies; in both countries, desktops and laptops were the default internet access device for most people when digital buying took off, and many consumers still prefer completing ecommerce transactions on those larger screens. By the same token, mobile’s share of total retail sales will be far higher in Asia-Pacific than elsewhere, at 23.6%.

Social commerce is rising rapidly worldwide. But to what extent can the US market mirror that of China, the world leader in social commerce?