Global Media Intelligence 2019: Canada

Key Features

TV viewing and video streaming remain lower than in many other countries surveyed.

• Just over 78% of internet users in Canada polled in H1 2019 had watched live TV in the prior month, compared with 82.3% in the US and 87.8% in the UK. Similarly, the share streaming video content in Canada (75.7%) was well behind the proportions in the US and UK, at 79.1% and 87.7%, respectively.
• Overall, 87.9% of respondents in Canada had watched TV in some form in the preceding month. The likelihood of an internet user being also a TV viewer correlated directly with age in Q1 2019, according to GlobalWebIndex. While 73.4% of web users ages 16 to 24 had watched TV in the month prior to polling, that share was more than 20 percentage points higher (94.9%) in the 55-to-64 age bracket. Females and individuals in affluent households were also more likely to be TV viewers.
• Engagement with subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) services such as Amazon Prime Video or Netflix is still rising in Canada. Some 69.3% of internet users had used SVOD in the prior month, making it the second-most-popular method of viewing TV and video content, after live TV.
• Alternative ways of watching TV shows—including broadcasters’ catch-up services and recording shows to watch later—are popular, too, used by 52.7% and 58.3% of internet users, respectively. Males, affluent households and urban residents again posted above-average rates for these options.
• It’s worth noting that Canada’s internet users were more likely to be active on social media than to watch live TV. Fully 82.0% of respondents identified themselves as social network users. Social networking was more widespread among younger people and affluents, but nearly three-quarters of the oldest cohort had also checked in to social sites or apps during the prior month. GlobalWebIndex includes YouTube in its social media category, which widens the reach of social beyond sites such as Facebook, for the purposes of this survey.