Canadians lead web charts

Warc, 6 March 2013

TORONTO: Consumers in Canada spend over 41 hours a month online, second only to Americans, but they top the global rankings in terms of monthly page views and visits, according to new research.

The 2013 Canada Digital Future in Focus report from comScore, the digital measurement company, examined prevailing trends in web usage, online video, digital advertising, mobile, social media and e-commerce and considered their impact on the Canadian marketplace.

ComScore found the digital media landscape becoming increasingly fragmented as more people started using internet-enabled devices. The proportion of smartphone subscribers, for example, grew 17 points in one year, from 45% in December 2011 to 62% in December 2012.

"The growing number of digital platforms and continued adoption of mobile devices has brought to fruition an evolved consumer and more complex digital ecosystem," said Bryan Segal, Vice President, comScore Canada.

"Advertisers, agencies and publishers alike must have a holistic understanding of how these puzzle pieces fit together if they are to prosper in the year ahead," he added.

Smartphone subscribers were also seen to be significantly more likely than feature phone subscribers, 43% versus 28%, to own another connected device such as a tablet or e-reader.

And the percentage of smartphone subscribers watching TV or video on that device more than doubled in a year, from 16% at the end of 2011 to 37% twelve months later.

More generally, Canada ranked second worldwide, behind the UK, in terms of the average length of time spent viewing videos, at 25 hours per month, and the number of videos per viewer, at 291.

Social media continued to grow with a 3% increase in 2012 in the number of unique visitors, but by far the greatest rises came in the smaller players such as Pinterest, up 792%, and Tumblr, up 96%. Instagram too picked up quickly in the second half of the year.

The report concludes that consumers have quickly become platform agnostic in their digital media consumption. Businesses and marketers will have to follow suit, developing platform agnostic strategies, with online video likely to play an important role as a bridge between traditional and digital platforms.

Data sourced from comScore; additional content by Warc staff