Online video has a bigger piece of Canada’s ad spend pie than ever, according to Warc.
The global analytics firm has released its forecast for year-end 2018, and it’s predicting that this year online video ad spend in Canada will represent 17.2% of all video spend. That’s up from 14.4% in 2017. A decade ago, online video represented only 0.3% of total video spend. Warc’s data shows that the rising share of online video isn’t just consistent; it’s exponential.
Warc has confirmed that online video saw $617.5 million in ad spend in Canada last year, and predicts that Canadian advertisers will up their spend to $745.6 million this year.
For television, although it represents a larger share of video spend, its total spend is predicted to go down, as it has for several years now. Canadian television saw $3.7 billion in ad spend for 2017 and is predicted to go down slightly to $3.6 billion. Its predicted decrease of 2.1% is slightly lower than the 2017 decrease of 2.2%.
Television’s spending decline in Canada has not been entirely consistent; it has seen positive growth as recently as 2014, but its decline was sharpest in 2013, when it saw a 10% reduction in spending.
Although TV’s growth rates may seem turbulent, the growth in digital ad spend has not been a consistent trajectory either. Warc’s data shows that although spending in digital is going up, growth in that spending is going down. Digital video spending growth saw a peak in 2013, with a growth rate of 126.1%, but has slowed consistently since then and is predicted to hit only 20.7% by the end of this year.