Advertising spend by national Canadian brands on digital has increased from 44% to 57%, while advertising spend on television has decreased from 40% to 33% in Canada… has the digital pendulum swung too far?
For years, television has done three things relentlessly: been one of the most trusted advertising mediums for consumers; delivered broad reach; and has provided marketers brand-building communications to a balanced media plan. At the same time, sell-side media owners have made it easier for advertisers to shift spend to digital and programmatic. Buy-side agencies and advertisers are having to ‘do more with less’ and some of those aforementioned digital advances have made it easier to spend on digital.
With 2020 in the rearview mirror, let us review three highlights that have set the stage for the advertising landscape in 2021:
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Digital unseats television to become the leading media type for advertising in 2020, expanding from 42% to 47% of market investment across US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand
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Compared to the US (+5.8% pnts) and UK (+4.2% pnts), Canada had the most pronounced upward movement in digital allocation of ad expenditure, up +6.1% pnts versus 2019.
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Canada has seen 4 consecutive quarters of increasing digital allocation, seemingly compounded by the pandemic.
To the average consumer, digital innovation has brought nothing but countless tools and technological advances. Beyond just programmatic, advances in digital have helped accelerate all media types (think OTT for video, connected devices for audio, and digital out-of-home capabilities). Finally, for the marketing community at large, digital has brought new avenues for getting content and advertising messages in front of consumers like never before. But digital has had its fair share of challenges – measurement has never been harder for the ‘most measurable medium.’ Malicious actors are stealing ad dollars, advertising to kids continues to have limitations, viewability benchmarks are no higher than 75%, and brand safety for advertisers is continuously marred by data privacy challenges.
As I’ve started to tell my 5-year-old, ‘easy’ isn’t always the right way, but as we start to put 2020 in the rearview mirror, we’ll see if this is a trend that will stay or just a bump in the road that came (and went) with the pandemic.
