Print media, TV ad numbers fall

Spending priorities have changed dramatically over the past decade. In the fiscal year ending 2007, only seven per cent of the government’s advertising expenditures went to the internet. That year, TV received 36 per cent of funds, radio 19 per cent and newspapers 26 per cent.

The drastic shift reflects how the internet has restructured the entire advertising industry.

“The government is just mirroring what’s happening in the private sector,” Scotiabank analyst Jeff Fan said.

For the past five years, internet advertising has grown largely at the expense of print media as companies buy cost-effective, targeted ads online, Fan said in a recent report.

“It is widely expected that more of the future shift will be at the expense of traditional TV, which would include not only advertising revenue, but also subscription revenue,” he wrote.

As companies try to reach consumers wherever they watch content, the industry should think of online streaming and TV as a combined video market rather than separate entities, Fan said.

For its part, the federal government said it changed its tactics to reach Canadians where they spend their time: online.

Digital ads are a costeffective way to reach the nearly 90 per cent of Canadian households that have internet connections, according to the federal report.

Canadians “use digital technologies in their daily lives and expect the government