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comScore, Inc. has released the 2012 Canada Digital Future in Focus report. This annual report examines how the prevailing trends in general web usage and demographics, social media, online video, digital advertising, mobile and search are defining the current Canadian marketplace and provides insight into what these trends mean for the year ahead.

“The digital media industry in Canada is evolving in extraordinary ways, largely driven by today’s multi-platform consumer engaging with content across a variety of media,” said Bryan Segal, vice president, comScore Canada. “2012 is poised to be a defining year for digital as consumers grow their engagement with social, video, mobile and other emerging media. As Canadian businesses shift more of their ad dollars and investments online, it is more important than ever to understand the key trends being seen across platforms to devise effective marketing strategies and deliver digital ROI.”

Key insights from the 2012 Canada Digital Future in Focus include:

• Canada continues to lead the world in online engagement, with visitors spending an average 45 hours per month online, representing a fertile ground for digital marketers and advertisers.
• While Facebook is nearing a point of visitor saturation in Canada, other social networks’ visitor bases are posting strong growth, including Twitter, LinkedIn and Tumblr. Engagement on many social sites is trending upward, with Facebook driving the large majority of the increase in total minutes and page views for the overall category.
• Online video is becoming an increasingly popular channel, with total videos viewed up 58 percent. YouTube continues to dominate the marketplace, representing nearly 1 in every 2 videos viewed in Canada.
• Display advertising is evolving to be more social, not only with the rise of “socially-published ads” (i.e. those published on social networking sites), but also the increase of “socially-enabled” ads running across the web that direct click-throughs to the brand’s Facebook fan page.
• Smartphone penetration has reached 45 percent in Canada, with daily mobile content usage growing more than 50 percent in several key content categories.

Join Mike Wall, Director, comScore Canada in a webinar on Wednesday, March 21st at 2 PM ET, as he shares key insights from the 2012 Canada Digital Future in Focus report and discusses what these trends mean for marketers in 2012.