It looks like 2024 will be a pretty good year for ad revenue in Canada. According to GroupM’s This Year Next Year mid-year forecast, Canadian ad revenue is predicted to rise to $17.6 billion this year, a 5.7% increase over 2023. Growth will decelerate slightly in 2025 to 5.1% growth although upcoming sports events will bring in ad dollars over the next few years. Upcoming elections will not have a significant impact since the 2021 federal election only accounted for 0.3% of the total that year.

Connected TV (CTV) and retail media are the two main drivers of growth in Canada. CTV is expected to increase by 26.4% this year and jump an additional 40.9% in 2025. Global streamers like Disney+, Amazon Prime and Paramount+ are fairly new to the ad market and competition is expected to increase as streamers target sports events as part of their growth strategy – the recent Amazon Prime/NHL partnership for example.

Linear TV will likely stay flat this year with just a 0.3% rise after last year’s 8.9% decline. The strength of CTV is expected to offset linear TV’s declines of the past five years. Total TV in Canada is predicted to grow at a 4.8% on a compound annual basis through 2029.

The retail media market in Canada is the sixth largest globally thanks to Amazon, Walmart and Loblaws. Retail media is expected to grow 7.8% this year to $2.6 billion, accounting for 14.9% of the country’s total ad revenue. That’s a big jump from 5% in 2019.

Search ad revenue is the slowest growing digital channel. It is forecast to reach $6.1 billion in 2024, a 3.0% increase from last year. Other digital – non-search and non-retail – is expected to increase to 10.4% to #3.4 billion, a rise of 12.0% inclusive of all digital extensions.

According to the GroupM forecast, Canada is the second largest audio market globally. Looking at the performance of audio this year, the CRTC reports that time spent listening to digital audio has grown while time spent listening to terrestrial radio has declined at a 5.2% compound annual growth rate (CAGR ). The forecast predicts that total audio in Canada will increase by 7.5% this year, driven by 13.8% digital audio growth and the return of auto advertisers.

Expectations for other media include total OOH, which is projected to increase 10.0%, as will DOOH, to take digital to $241.5 million – 37.8% of the OOH total. For print, GroupM foresees continuing declines in print ad revenue with newspapers down 5.5% this year and magazines, including their digital extensions, down 1.4%.