Sometimes it is good to get out of your sandbox for a change of scenery, so I thought I would take a look at how other traditional media are adapting to the new digital media landscape. Before we do that lets have a look at the media universe according to the 2013 Media Digest published by Marketing and the Canadian Media Directors Council (CMDC).

The media consumption habits of Canadians shows that traditional media still captures over 80% of a person’s attention. The chart below also shows the share of advertising dollars vs media consumption share. Magazines are doing very well in this analysis as it shows magazines have less than 1% of media consumption share but have a 4.5% of ad dollars share with an industry index of 555.



This great infographic gives you a good birds eye view of what is happening in the Canadian media universe and the choices a media planner has at their disposal. You you can drill down to see more stats. http://www.cmdc.ca/useful-links.html

Canada’s major media companies now offer a suite of solutions that may include TV, radio, web, newspaper, magazines and out of home.  The chart below on cross media ownership in Canada from the  2013 Media digest outlines the relative offerings and competitive positioning.


One of the digital leaders in Canada is TSN, a tv station, and they were the keynote at the ClickZ digital marketing conference in Toronto on May 15. Mark Silver, the Head of Digital at TSN, talked about the changes TSN is undergoing in the bridging of TV to digital for their audience and advertisers by offering a multi-platform experience. He revealed that TSN will be growing from 2 channels to 5 and will be unveiling a new web site this fall, plus new apps.

Their planned digital offerings will include native apps such as TSN Go (a TV  companion app for paid cable subscribers) plus free specialized content apps, TSN Hockey and TSN Golf. They currently have a free TSN mobile app available that gets high usage on smartphones. The TSN offerings also include Sports AM radio stations with local broadcast rights of NHL games.  The appetite for sports content will be tested with Sportnet’s bold moves that includes TV, radio, magazine and online as part of the brand’s offerings and Rogers ownership of pro sports franchises as content.

Radio has not died but has maintained it position as the #2 most used medium and there has been some interesting usage habits. The #2 ranking is no surprise as smartphones are banned in cars and 51% of radio usage is in cars. Another fact 30% of radio usage is online. This trend is supported by the launch of Indie 88.1 a FM radio station in Toronto that was launched this past September 2013. In February 2014, it had 230,000 visitors per month with 50,000 listening to the station online for 1 hour a day 6 times a month and 11,000 daily. Typically, a 30 second radio spot will reach 10 - 20,000 people in the Toronto market through traditional methods. The station is actively selling display ads on their web site in addition to 30 seconds spots that reach both traditional and online audiences.

The media offerings from TV and radio stations, perhaps, spur or fine tune an idea to help give your media brand a competitive edge in today’s hyper-cluttered media landscape. The question I ask? Do advertisers really care how the message is sent as long as the target market is delivered with enough frequency that will generate the expected marketing outcome. In some cases digital will not work in the car as  media planner use radio or OOH to reach this audience.