• by Tyler Loechner  @mp_tyler, May 28, 2015

Much like in the U.S., programmatic video advertising continues to pick up steam in Canada as well.

Just over one-in-five (20.8%) Canadian agencies expect to spend the “majority” (over 60%) of their digital video budgets via programmatic in 2015, up from 10.8% in 2014. One-third (35.8%) plan to spend 40-59% of their digital video budgets programmatically.

Another 29.2% plan to spend 20-39% of their budgets via programmatic, and the remaining 14.2% plan to spend under 19% of their budget through programmatic channels.

Put another way: Over half (56.6%) of Canadian agencies expect to spend at least 40% of their digital video budgets via programatic this year. That’s up from the 40.5% of Canadian agencies that planned for the same in 2014.

The data comes from a new survey released by Yahoo’s BrightRoll, which partnered with IAB Canada for the study. The companies surveyed 130 executives from advertising agencies across Canada during a three-week period in February and March of 2015. Respondents were incentivized to participate by being entered to win a drawing for an Apple iPad.

BrightRoll released a similar survey about the programmatic video ad landscape in the U.S. earlier this year. In that report, U.S. respondents said they expect mobile video to be the fastest-growing category in terms of digital media spend this year. Canadian agencies share the same belief.

Over half (53%) of respondents in BrightRoll’s Canadian report said mobile video is where they expect the largest increase in digital media spend, while the vast majority (85%) intend to dedicate budgets to tablet video.

Canadian agencies tend to prioritize completed views for digital video campaigns, as 25% of respondents said that is their most important success metric. Conversions (18%), brand lift (11%), sales impact (10%) and click-through rate (10%) round out the top-five most important metrics.

Viewability was next, with 9% of respondents saying that is their most important success metric, followed by validated impressions (6%).

If recent research from programmatic video ad platform TubeMogul is any indication, the responses BrightRoll gathered show that Canadian agencies are not optimizing digital video ad campaigns as well as they could. TubeMogul’s research found that “human, in-view completions” is the best metric to optimize for, noting that marketers spend an extra 15% to 22% per human, in-view completion when optimizing for other metrics, such as click-rate.