The new year is lining up to be a good one for the industry, with moderate growth in ad spend projected for 2025, along with some budget increases as a result of softened inflation, according to Canadian media leaders. They believe ad spend will continue to span both emerging and traditional media, with digital and connected TV (not surprisingly) getting the most attention, and that transparency and accountability will be important factors for media channel selection.

Leanne Burnett-Wood, president of media intelligence company Magna Canada, says 2024 saw significant moves among media providers, pointing to partnerships and acquisitions such as the content rejig between Corus, Bell, and Rogers; the launch of ad tiers for global streaming services such as Prime Video, Netflix and Disney; as well as Bell Media’s acquisition of OutFront’s assets and Rogers’ acquisition of a controlling stake in the MLSE. “These changes underscore the importance of innovation to attract Canadian ad dollars. 2025 will be watched closely by the industry to see which of these bets pay off by way of attracting incremental eyeballs.”

She adds that IPG Mediabrands-owned agency group is forecasting a 5.2% ad spend growth in the coming year, driven mostly by digital and connected TV (CTV). “While linear TV is expected to maintain demand following recent content reshuffling, CTV stands out as a key growth driver for television-focused media spending in Canada. Major global platforms such as Prime Video and Netflix are set to compete with Canadian broadcasters’ CTV offerings, leveraging innovative content and sports to attract advertising dollars.”

However, managing director Caroline Breton says Involved Media Canada is predicting ad spend to be relatively flat in Canada for 2025, but agrees that a continuation of dollars will shift from linear TV, print and radio to digital and OOH. “In the digital space, CTV will keep gaining momentum as transparency, viewability and brand safety are making streaming very appealing to brands. It will be interesting to see if the implementation of the digital sales taxes will have any impact on platform selection moving forward. When it comes to OOH, the digitization of the channel has transformed the space. The channel now offers flexibility, enhanced targeting, integrations with other digital channels plus transparency.”

Scott Stewart, general manager of Glassroom says budgets will continue to be challenging in the coming year as media buyers wrestle with having to “do more with less.” He adds that “the increased accountability to return on ad spending metrics have never been greater.” Stewart says there are increasing pressures on marketers, such as the need to convert marketing spend into verified actions, and as a result, “media channels that can help verify spend conversions into consumer actions – and provide metrics back like driving increased footfall, converted store visits, and sales conversions, especially in retail – are now taking on a greater share of the total spend because they are more accountable to driving real-time business results.”

Andrew Butts, general manager Ontario and West at Cossette Media, says that although his agency is projecting budget increases in 2025, the increase might not mean much as inflation will mitigate a lot of the real impact.

“That includes having to pay for the Digital Services Tax,” Butts says. “Google and Amazon took the bulk of the flack because they acknowledged that the DST was going to be directly passed on, but I have a hard time imagining that all the other players are just absorbing a 2.5% to 3% hit against the profit. They’re finding another way to pass that along.”

But, looking at other trends, he agrees that connected TV is gaining significant market share, and will maybe the largest growth avenue for 2025, but that gain will come at a premium compared to linear TV, since there’s a premium held against much of the CTV inventory.

“The other big one for continued growth in 2025 is the retail media space,” says Butts. “Not only are you seeing a boom in that investment, but you’re also seeing an increasing number of companies trying to engage in that to generate some revenue against their first-party data. I think we’ll continue to see a significant investment in the retail media space on both the advertising side, as well as the product side.”