In winter 2021, CBC enjoyed growth across its platforms, including Gem, Radio-Canada’s Ici TOU.TV, and audio content on its websites and apps.
Let’s start with the growth. Over the past year, CBC & Radio-Canada sites experienced record-breaking digital audiences. In January 2021, the public broadcasters’ sites reached 25.2 million unique visitors/viewers, up 13% from January 2020, and up 5% from the month before. During each month of winter 2021, on average nine million video content starts were generated on CBC’s Gem streaming platform – an 18% increase over winter 2020. Radio-Canada’s streaming platform ICI TOU.TV saw a monthly average of 13.5 million video content starts – a 2% increase over last year. Gem and Ici TOU.TV each enjoyed a monthly average of 1.2 million unique visitors/viewers.
And on average each month, over 8.7 million audio content starts were generated across CBC’s websites and apps, with audio streaming representing over 3.5 million hours each month in winter 2021.
There have been other successes. CBC has long been recognized as one of Canada’s most trusted broadcasters, which allowed it to benefit from the fact that advertisers have been much keener to support Canadian-owned publishers during the pandemic. Another is the spike in connected TV adoption since COVID-19 began.
“We’ve doubled the number of impressions per month versus a year ago for connected TV and OTT offerings,” says Gigi Lui Forth, director of digital sales, Media Solutions. “We are the number-one podcast publisher in Canada for both Canadian and international content, and we have seen our podcast advertising grow over the past year,, as well as the podcast market in general.”
These achievements have been reached despite many challenges. Operating in a lockdown has meant many cancellations and reduced spend by advertisers, so to respond to client needs, CBC allowed advertisers to get out of planned media or shift it forward to another quarter.
That flexibility further increased trust and loyalty to the brand among media agencies and direct clients. “During the pandemic clients have come to us with their doubts and questions. We’re here to reassure them that CBC and Radio-Canada are safe places for them to be,” Forth says.
In Quebec, that sense of safety was evidenced by Radio-Canada’s partnership with the federal and provincial governments in delivering all messaging regarding the pandemic. Says Emilie Filion, director of digital sales for the francophone market, “This was supported by the highly trusted journalistic work the Radio-Canada platform provides to our viewers. As a result of this safety and trust, we saw a spike in inventory made available to our traders and clients.”
CBC has been cautious with brand-safety measures, allowing advertisers to avoid content with downbeat themes such as COVID-19, while at the same time convincing them that some breaking-news topics are safe. As a result, more brands are coming to CBC looking to reach audiences online.
The recent crises have provided unprecedented learning opportunities. “One of the things we learned through COVID-19 and #BlackLivesMatter is the industry’s incredible resilience,” says Jeff MacPherson, director, monetization platform and services. “It was very quick to adapt and create new messaging for all the different hurdles it came across. The fastest adaptation was programmatic’s ability to rethink messaging and get it out there on the fly. As for the deprecation of the third-party cookie, we are looking at initiatives like IAB Tech Lab’s Project Rearc, the Trade Desk’s Unified ID and Google FLoC, among others.”
CBC continues to invest in creating custom contextual segments through a CMS end-point integration. It has added COVID to its brand safety measures so that advertisers that want to avoid such content are able to do so. At the same time, CBC is working hard to educate advertisers that news is a safe territory.
“Previously, a lot of advertisers have not wanted to associate their brands with the news,” says Forth. “But in our world, news is a big deal, so it makes sense to demonstrate that there are plenty of safe topics that fall into the breaking-news category, such as health and wellness and weather.”
One of the unforeseen benefits of its contextual outreach is that many brands are now coming to CBC to reach audiences online. Whether it’s news or entertainment, the public broadcaster’s trust factor and its willingness to pivot have made CBC/Radio-Canada sites the country’s top Canadian-owned digital property for unique visitors/viewers.
CBC/Radio-Canada is Canada’s national public broadcaster and one of its largest cultural institutions. The Corporation is a leader in reaching Canadians on new platforms and delivers a comprehensive range of radio, television, internet, and satellite-based services. Deeply rooted in the regions, CBC/Radio-Canada is the only domestic broadcaster to offer diverse regional and cultural perspectives in English, French and eight Indigenous languages. Contact Jeff MacPherson, director, monetization platform and services at CBC: jeff.macpherson@cbc.ca
