Guideline, previously known as Standard Media Index (SMI), reports that overall Canada’s ad spend in 2023 across all media types remained flat year-over-year, even declining 4% in Q4. Within digital, social platforms demonstrated a YoY growth of 1.2% while digital audio ad types grew 29%. Podcasts led digital audio in growth of 39% while streaming audio ads also grew 27%.
Guideline gathers its data from agency holding companies and leading independent agencies in a handful of markets, including Canada, to aggregate, cleanse and harmonize their ad spend data. Today Guideline reports on about six and a half billion dollars in annual spending in the Canadian market, and $100 billion in annual spending in the US market, directly from the agency billing systems.
Darrick Li, Guideline’s VP client partner North America, says he wasn’t surprised at the Q4 decline, feeling as early as October that the market was still at a level of uncertainty. “The uncertainty I think was contributed to by a number of factors, overall economic indicators created hesitation that ripples down to ad spending and advertising dollars and marketing, reflecting year-over-year percentage change.”
In terms of print media, looking at Q4, it was down 23%, and was down 27% for the year overall. “Traditional print continues to be a smaller and smaller piece of the media mix,” Li says, “But, I think the print industry would want me to share what it looks like from a digital perspective in print. There’s a lot of narrative around local media, so digital ad spending on sites that are traditionally in the print business was up 5%. It’s not huge but it was up 10% in Q4, and 5% on the year. So, if we were to include both print and digital, the overall print market of traditional print and digital print, it was up 4% on the year. It’s a good news story.”
Li believes there will be a lot of eyes on the video ecosystem this year, including linear TV, streaming and digital video, TikTok and short form video. “There are so many more options for brands and how they are going to allocate those ad dollars. Are they focused on CTV, long form video or short form video like TIkTok? We are seeing a little bit of a shift happening to that in the U.S. and maybe we’ll start to see it in Canada as well.”
Looking forward to the 2024 ad spend, Li doesn’t see the overall market growing double digits quite yet. There’s a still a level of uncertainty with marketers, and the market continues to be fragmented with so many options for their ad dollars. “I hope we’re in positive territory this quarter, but again, I would describe it as cautious increases. We might see a flat Q1 but it’s an Olympics year, so we’re going to see some of that benefit in the Canadian market. I think the market will pick up when the weather’s warmer across Canada, maybe in Q2, Q3.”
Guideline, owner of Standard Media Index, Lumina and SQAD, captures actual agency invoicing data from major holding companies and independents – serving as a source of truth for ad spend and pricing data that provides accuracy and transparency across the global media ecosystem.
