Share of programmatic spending by sector, Q1 2014
According to Casale Media data shared exclusively with AD-Vantage, the Canadian programmatic marketplace continues to be dominated by retail, auto and financial brands, which together accounted for 59% of exchange spending in Q1 2014. But that share was down from 64% in Q4, thanks to growth in travel advertising around the March break season.
Casale Media began collecting data on the Canadian programmatic market in Q3 last year, so this is our first look at early-year seasonal trends in programmatic spending on a sector-by-sector basis, said Casale Media.
Not surprisingly, the major upticks came from home and garden retailers and travel destinations.
Travel’s market share grew 4 points over Q4 2013, the data shows. In dollar terms, travel grew more than any other sector. The biggest spender in the category was Disney, which was the sixth-highest spending brand in Canada.
Retail, meanwhile, regained its market-leading position after an end-of-year slump that saw automotive come to dominate the market. Retail remains much weaker in Canada than in the U.S., where it more than doubles the next-largest category. However, Canadian retail saw modest growth over last quarter, while U.S. retail drew back from a booming holiday season.
Canada’s biggest retail spenders were Procter & Gamble and Home Depot. (Casale includes CPG in retail for its breakdown.) Casale CMO Julia Casale-Amorim said there was a pronounced spike in retail spend the weekend of Daylight Savings, likely marking the start of spring home and garden campaigning. P&G’s spending also grew substantially in the U.S. in the same period, potentially marking a greater global commitment to the channel, she said.
No seasonal bumps for finance, telecom
In Casale’s U.S. data for Q1, released last week, finance showed a marked increase in programmatic spend around tax season. No such uptick was visible in Canada. H&R Block, which drove spending in the U.S., did not break the top 100 highest spenders in Canada, Casale-Amorim said.
Brands that spent the most on programmatic
However, financial institutions made a strong showing on the top 10 brands ranking. American Express, which recently shared some insight about its programmatic strategy with AD-Vantage, was the highest-spending brand in Canada for the quarter. AmEx spent more than double the amount of GM, the second-ranked spender.
“While the data shows a Q1 surge in spending from American Express, they have ranked within the top 5 spending brands since we started reporting in Q3 of last year, so it’s not a huge surprise,” said Casale-Amorim. “As an early adopter, they have had time to test and learn and are well positioned to capitalize on Canada’s still developing market.”
Telecom, which is ranked third in the U.S., remains a distant fifth in Canada, with relatively little growth in Q1. However, Casale-Amorim said that Canadian telecom advertisers spent more on average per impression than advertisers in other sectors, leading to the highest average winning bid prices. “This pattern mirrors what we see from Telco in the U.S., and is behavior that we often see in cases where buyers have a narrowly defined, high value target audience, [such as] potential subscribers with short term conversion potential,” she said. “It’s possible that Canadian Telcos are still testing before committing to a larger share of spend.”
Top 100 brands still account for lion’s share of trading
The top 10 brands accounted for 26% of programmatic spending in Q1, down from 33% in Q4 and 37% in Q3. The trend shows programmatic spend becoming less concentrated in the hands of a few big brands.
But the opposite is true for the top 100 programmatic spenders, who still make up 76% of all spending, virtually the same as in Q4 (77%).
Market share held by top spenders, Q1 2014
Taken together, the two trends show the top 100 spenders investing more heavily, as they continue to grow more comfortable with the channel through testing and experience. But spend outside the top 100 has not increased significantly. Programmatic in Canada is still chiefly the domain of a select group of global and national brands.
“We’re seeing spend begin to even out – but that’s only happening among the big national brands,” said Casale-Amorim. “We have yet to see any significant growth in share of spending across the overall buyer pool.”
Casale’s recent Quarterly Index Report, which focused on the U.S., showed that in-house trading desks were on the rise, with the number of DSP seats held by marketers growing 267% year over year. Casale-Amorim said the data used to derive this trend was global, rather than U.S. specific, suggesting Canada may be seeing a rise in in-house trading as well.
Casale Media collects its quarterly data from billions of programmatic trades executed across exchanges that use the Casale Index Platform. All data are presented using relative indices, rather than absolute trade volumes or dollar spend, to reflect that the data come from a representative sample.
