Are you spending your media dollars where consumers are? A new report from eMarketer suggests that media dollars in Canada aren’t reaching their target audiences as well as they could be.

The report, called “A Look at Smartphone Behaviours and How Brands Are Attempting to Master Mobile,” includes numbers that showcase gaps between time spent and the percentage of ad spend across all platforms, with the exception of print spend.

The percentage of ad spend going to mobile, an area long criticized as lacking in Canada, is coming closer to catching up with time spent on the platform in the Canadian market, nearly reaching the same level in 2018, according to the report.

Ad spend on mobile is still lagging behind consumer use though, with 17.4% of the overall ad share predicted to be spent on the platform in 2016 versus Canadian consumers spending 25.5% of their media time on non-voice mobile activities.

That ad spend share will rise to 22% in 2017 with time spent on non-voice mobile rising to 27.5%. In 2018 the gap shrinks further, with ad spend on mobile at 26.9% and time spent on the platform rising to 29.2%.

The difference between time spent and share of ad spend is much closer on desktop, with 19.4% ad share predicted for 2016 against the 18.8% of time spent on the platform by Canadians.

Non-voice mobile and desktop figures combine under digital spend to account for a predicted gap of 8.8% between time spent and share of ad spend in 2016, with ad spend share at 36.2% and time spent at 45%.

In contrast, there is an expected surplus of 15.3% on print, with consumers expected to spend 4.2% of their media time on newspapers and magazines in 2016 and the share of ad spend predicted to come in at 19.5%.

Image: Shutterstock