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).

An expected economic recovery in 2021 bodes well for Canada’s advertising market.

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.

The adoption of social commerce—the ability to shop and buy, directly or indirectly, via social media platforms—accelerated during the pandemic. The vast majority of social commerce today is within the discovery and consideration stages. However, checkout capabilities are not available from the leading social networks in Canada.

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

Instagram and YouTube were also social platforms that many respondents said they use for both influence and to make purchases, with YouTube in particular being nearly as popular a destination for influence as Facebook. Overall, we expect there will be a big pivot to more UGC this year.

Our revised estimates for total ad spending in Canada this year show a big decline, mirroring what’s expected overall for the Canadian economy. Digital will hold its level after years of double-digit growth.

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

eMarketer junior forecasting analyst Nazmul Islam breaks down TV’s share of the total video ad market in Canada and why budgets are flowing to competitors like YouTube and Instagram. Watch now.

This report will take a look at the key digital habits and personas across age groups in Canada.

According to an April 2020 poll from the Ryerson University Social Media Lab, LinkedIn trails only two other social networks, Facebook and Instagram, in the number of account holders in Canada. Of the adult internet users in Canada surveyed, 44% said they had a LinkedIn account, compared with 83% for Facebook and 51% for Instagram.

This report collection explores programmatic digital display ad spending through 2021 across Canada, China, France, Germany, the UK and the US. Reports include breakdowns by device, transaction type and more, and explore the factors driving investment.

Programmatic transactions for digital display account for 86.4% of the market in Canada this year, even though global privacy reform and device tracking protections are making it more challenging to execute.