How Connected TV Advertising Works in Canada

What is connected TV advertising?

Connected TV is television delivered over the internet to a TV set. Not a phone, not a laptop — the big screen in the living room, fed by a smart TV, a streaming stick, a games console or a set-top box.

That definition matters commercially, because it is what separates CTV from online video. The same 30-second film served into a Facebook feed is online video. Served into an ad break on Prime Video on a Samsung set, it is CTV, and it is bought, priced and measured differently.

The practical difference for an advertiser is attention. CTV ad breaks are typically non-skippable and viewed on the largest screen in the house, usually with someone else in the room. That is why completion rates are high and why CPMs sit above most digital video.

What do CTV, AVOD, FAST and BVOD actually mean?

Four acronyms that get used interchangeably in sales decks and mean four different things. Here is the plain version.

Simplicity Media. Platform availability in Canada verified September 2026.

The one that trips people up is FAST. Because it is free to the viewer and linear in feel, it behaves more like traditional television than on-demand streaming does — lean-back viewing, less deliberate selection, and correspondingly lower CPMs.

A note on BVOD: it is more common in British and Australian media vocabulary than Canadian. Canadian sellers usually just name the service. It is worth knowing because it turns up in international plans and vendor decks.

What is programmatic CTV?

Programmatic CTV means buying inventory through an automated auction rather than negotiating an insertion order with a broadcaster. One buy can reach across several platforms at once, targeted by audience rather than by show.

In Canada that route has widened considerably in the last two years. Disney+ opened to programmatic in April 2025 through The Trade Desk, StackAdapt, DV360 and Magnite. Bell Media's Crave, Tubi, TSN and RDS inventory is available through all major DSPs alongside direct. Amazon DSP in Canada also carries third-party inventory from Bell Media, CBC, Rogers, Netflix and Roku.

The trade-off is the same as it is anywhere. Programmatic buys audience efficiently across many platforms; direct buys certainty about which programme your ad sat inside, and usually better access to a platform's own audience data.

Why does Simplicity prefer buying direct?

Because every independent layer between a client's budget and the media owner takes a margin, and those layers are numerous and rarely itemised. Buying direct means the rate we negotiate is the rate the client pays for, and our fee is stated separately.

It has three practical consequences on a Canadian plan.

• You know where the ad ran. Direct buys name the platform, the service and usually the programming. That matters more in Canada than most markets, because the inventory pool is small enough that placement quality varies sharply.
• We are quoted real rates. Not clearing prices. That is what makes the planning range on our CTV cost page first-hand rather than borrowed from American data.
• The cost stack is visible. Media cost, our fee, nothing unitemised in between.

Where a brief genuinely needs programmatic — audience-first buying across several platforms with unified frequency capping, or short-flight optimisation — we run it. The point is that the choice is made on the brief rather than on the agency's capability.

What actually happens when a Canadian CTV campaign runs?

Five steps. None of them are complicated, and any agency that makes them sound complicated is selling you the complication.

• Audience and platform selection. Who you need to reach decides which Canadian platforms carry them, in what volume, and at what cost.
• Rate negotiation or auction setup. Direct buys are negotiated against published or quoted rates. Programmatic buys are configured as deals or open auction.
• Creative delivery. Usually 15s or 30s, though 6s bumpers and interactive formats exist. Specs vary by platform and are the most common cause of a delayed launch.
• In-flight management. Pacing, frequency capping and placement checks. Canadian CTV supply is thinner than the US, so pacing needs watching more closely.
• Measurement. Completion, reach, frequency and whatever outcome data the buying route supports.

The step that catches most first-time CTV advertisers is creative delivery. Budget a fortnight between plan approval and launch, not a weekend.