Mobile video set to overtake desktop in Canada: Zenith

By 2021, the average person will spend 100 minutes per day watching online video, a new report finds. 

That’s up from 84 minutes this year, according to Zenith’s newly released online video forecast report, published this week. By 2021, the average person will watch an equivalent of 25 continuous days of video per year.

The reach of online video has grown at an average rate of 32% per year between 2013 and 2018, which Zenith attributes mostly to improvements in display sizes and quality of mobile devices, as well as faster and cheaper mobile data (although in Canada, the cost of mobile data remains higher than other comparable nations).

So how will that reflect in ad spend?

Globally, online video ad spend will be worth one-third of the TV ad market in 2021 – US$61 billion, compared to $180 billion. In Canada, online video ad spend will be closer to one half of TV ad spend, at CAD$1.47 billion compared to $3.1 billion in 2021.

Spend on mobile video has traditionally been lower in Canada than on non-mobile video, but Zenith predicts that mobile will start taking more than 50% of the digital ad spend pie by 2020 – taking $700 million of the total digital video ad spend ($1.34 billion).

Overall, ad spend in digital video will continue to grow, although as the market matures its growth rate will naturally slow. By 2021, single-digit growth in the market will be seen – 9.62%, down considerably from the growth recorded in 2018 (21.12%).