Five Years To Fix It: Why Canadian TV Can’t Afford Inertia

The day began with a critical examination of the effectiveness crisis in Canada. It's been brewing for a while: spend per capita here is much lower than in other major Anglo markets. Take Australia—25 million people, yet it is the 7th largest ad market globally. Canada has 40 million and sits in 11th place.

As Hilary Borndahl, CEO/Founder of Miix Analytics, pointed out, Canadian brands have over-indexed their spending in less effective media. Her ROI charts once again showed the power of linear to deliver excellent business results. Yet Guideline's data made it clear—CTV/streaming growth is coming at linear's expense. (link in article to download slides shared at the event - includes latest media spending trends in Canada)

Hilary argued that a smarter mix of linear and streaming, with less wasted spend in low-yield channels, would put Canada in a far stronger position. Encouragingly, this shift may be just beginning.

Slide from Hilary's presentation showing short-term profit from media type

My take? I've seen these charts for years, and too many brands simply refuse to believe them. Everyone nods along, but as a broadcaster panel noted, advertisers are shifting money away from linear before the audiences do. That's a real problem.

Quebecor's Patrick Jutras left us truly baffled by the lack of advertiser spend for audiences that any broadcaster would love: live linear TV shows that draw two million concurrent viewers on a weeknight in a province of only 6.5 million people.

Despite this extraordinary share of available audience, the ad spend doesn't follow. Quebecor has joined other broadcasters in stating publicly the model can't hold much longer—stations will start closing if things don't change in meaningful ways. Patrick commented, "Within the next five years, if nothing changes, some stations will have to make difficult choices, whether that means producing less local content, buying more foreign programming, or simply shutting down."

The broadcaster panel, thankfully, spoke about a new era of collaboration, which landed well with buyers in the room. They need reasons to keep investing in Canadian media, and competing with platforms on data, tech, ease (of transaction), and outcomes is essential. Without it, some of the broadcasters on stage won't survive.

Broadcasters - Corus, Bell, Rogers, Quebecor and CBC all together

I believe we'll see deeper cooperation soon—but will it be fast enough? Let's hope so. Inertia isn't an option, and the broadcasters admitted they must find common ground. As one person in the room put it: "Let's hope senior Bell Media execs finally get the message."

Pricing is another headache. In a world of unlimited, cheap impressions, justifying premium CPMs is a challenge—just ask Netflix! Guy Bisson's brilliant presentation highlighted the bleak outlook if broadcast CPMs were harmonized with social media.

Broadcasters, bound by regulation, can't win on price alone. Agencies were blunt: they won't spend on Canadian media out of charity. Guideline data shows top agencies are directing more spend locally, but it's not enough. TV deserves the spend it needs—but at a fair price.

What's refreshing is that no one's arguing anymore about whether TV works. Most brands say they want long-form, premium video. The problem is follow-through. Too often, they drift into digital environments with unverified audiences, programmatic opacity, and brand safety risks.

Philippe Kleim of Corus laid out how the complex Canadian TV programmatic ecosystem has enriched intermediaries while starving broadcasters and brands. He suggested that up to 80% of the spend can vanish in the middle. That's ridiculous.

Linear's direct path ensures most of the money goes to working media—imagine the ROI hit when the middle siphons off four-fifths of the budget. Broadcasters need to fix this quickly, because while digital isn't yet replacing lost linear dollars, spend is moving in that direction.

Philipp Kleim's landscape to illustrate the 300 possible paths to buying Canadian TV

If they digitize linear without solving this leakage, the consequences will be dire. I'm not saying programmatic is dead or that all tech is bad — but right now the real winners aren't clients or publishers, and that's a serious problem as more and more ad spend will be digitalized.

Another huge challenge is growing the pie. Currently, Canadian TV ad spend is flat, while the growth in CTV is further cannibalizing linear TV rather than shifting from a brand's existing digital spend. View Guideline's Canadian media and TV data here. 

The focus for the industry must be growth, not managing decline. That's why Canadian marketers and agencies should insist that the ad-supported streamers join Numeris and Thinktv, like other more vibrant markets have done. 

Social media remains a massive drain; some brands are shifting (Unilever, for instance) from being a broadcast-first to social-first despite the overwhelming evidence that it's less effective. Fashion beats science.

Deb Gurofsky from MediaPulse nailed it with her analogy: social media is a one-night stand; while TV builds long-term relationships. Her presentation was so strong, we're taking it to Future TV Global! (I think the world needs to see her one-time social media purchases.)

Social media - no memories, no connections, no commitments. Deb Gurofsky in action. 

On measurement, the new Numeris CEO, Alicia Olson-Keating, delivered a perfectly timed overview of their new vision and tools. Years in the making, Numeris is finally addressing the reality of digital fragmentation.

Even long-time critics in the room said they are optimistic. The agency leaders were extremely impressed with this presentation and the new services coming to the market.

It was a strong statement and perfectly timed. Alicia, having worked in Australia, noted that they delivered it there via a "MOC", and there's no reason the same can't be done in Canada.

We wrapped with four top agency leaders who did a brilliant job tackling the hard questions. They were frank, honest, and very much aligned on one key point: AI platforms could benefit TV, but only if the inputs are strong.

My concern is that big platforms will game these systems as effectively as they've gamed clients for years. Can broadcasters really out-data them? Time will tell.

Agency CEOs - WPP, OMD, Publicis and Horizon Media

The agencies stressed humans will still play a role in decisions—perhaps that's the real problem. Too much bias, too much personal consumption feeding into planning decisions (anyone up for an anecdote about what my kids watch?).

Maybe, just maybe, AI will finally cut through the noise and force the industry to follow the data, where linear TV's ROI is impossible to ignore.

Thanks for your support. Mark your calendars for September 30th, and we'll see you all next year.