Contents
- Josh Nathan (Moderator), The Trade Desk, Sr Director, Data Partnerships
- Tracy Ball, Bayer, Director, Media & Digital Platforms
- Christina Summers, Netflix, Country Leader Canada, Advertising Sales
- Matt Rivard, Google Canada, Director, Strategy & Product & Acceleration
- Devon MacDonald, Cairns Oneil, President
- Julie Kerr, CBC, Executive Director, Digital Product Strategy & Foresight
The new definition of “Television”
The panel opened with a fundamental question: What is television today? Tracy Ball, Bayer, offered a pragmatic lens, calling TV a device, not a content format. Christina Summers, Netflix, and Devon MacDonald, Cairns Oneil, echoed that view, pointing to generational and platform-based shifts in how audiences define and consume video content. Julie Kerr, CBC, highlighted the enduring communal nature of live events, while Matt Rivard, Google, underscored the generational divide and the personalized nature of content delivery today.
Across the board, panelists agreed: television is no longer confined to the living room screen or a linear schedule. It now encompasses any high-quality screen experience that delivers sight, sound, and motion—from appointment viewing to on-demand streaming.
Ad fragmentation and the struggle for scale
With content distribution scattered across platforms, ad strategies have had to adapt. Devon MacDonald described how the proliferation of formats has made achieving reach far more complicated. He notes, “Advertisers are desperate to access audiences at scale and it's incredibly difficult and complicated to find them in single places.”
Matt Rivard, on the other hand, says that “finding audiences is easier than ever…but understanding what drove impact is probably harder”.
Netflix’s Summers emphasized precision in their ad strategy, ensuring a seamless experience. Netflix is there to entertain its members. “How do we insert the ads into that experience so that it’s relevant. It resonates for consumers so that they’re seeing something that works within the content that they’re looking at” explained Summers.
Julie Kerr highlighted the real challenges traditional broadcasters face in delivering consistent ad experiences across digital platforms. Adapting linear content for devices like Roku, Samsung, and LG is both technically complex and expensive. She noted that live ad inventory is hard to manage due to fragmentation and that connected TV is still often treated like digital, even though it’s not. Still, she’s optimistic about progress, saying, “There’s still a lot of sophistication coming on the connected TV side to make those live experiences better for everybody.”
Technology’s role: a double-edged sword
The discussion then turned toward technology as both a problem and a potential solution. Tracy Ball made an impassioned case for greater transparency and collaboration, arguing that walled-gardens in the Canadian ecosystem are impeding progress:
“Everyone is still operating in silos. Understanding the opportunity across video has become vitally important to us. I think there is an opportunity for a single video budget, but the challenge is we’re operating in silos”.
MacDonald added that agencies like Cairns Oneil are actively working around these limitations by creating centralized data warehouses, integrating inputs from multiple media partners, and building custom attribution models for their clients. Yet, he warned, attribution remains a major challenge when “individual media placements try to take credit for a sale that was influenced by thousands of placements in advance of them.”
Both he and Ball stressed the need for a common measurement language, with Ball warning that “outcome-based planning” often focuses too narrowly on conversions, ignoring the cumulative impact of brand-building touchpoints.
Measurement: a holistic view
The panel collectively agreed: measurement remains the most critical and unresolved issue. Summers called for independent, third-party validation across platforms and expressed hope that the industry could align on a single model, even if every company is at a different stage of maturity.
Rivard referenced global initiatives like the World Federation of Advertisers' “Project Origin” as a blueprint Canada could follow. But he pointed out a sobering truth:
“If you ask everybody in this room, ‘how do you define a view when it comes to a video asset?’ you might get a dozen different definitions.”
Julie Kerr added that AI and machine learning are exciting tools for standardization, but they come with high costs and limited accessibility for smaller players. Ball emphasized the uneven playing field: “There are still brands flying blind, making gut-based decisions because data-driven tools are too expensive or complex.” She also flagged a structural mismatch in timelines: digital platforms offer immediate insights, while linear TV takes a year to deliver performance data. “It’s a real roadblock to agile decision-making,” she said.
Ratings in the algorithm age
The panel also explored how ratings and popularity metrics are evolving in the streaming era. Netflix’s Summers explained how their Top 10 lists are now tailored by country and updated daily, powered by both viewership and engagement algorithms. “We do it from a technology perspective. It’s not just about ratings or what the content producer thinks will resonate”.
Google’s Rivard noted that YouTube operates on a one-to-one programming model, where personalized recommendations replace aggregated ratings. CBC’s Kerr acknowledged that, internally, linear and digital ratings still function in separate silos, but she expressed optimism that real-time data could one day support programmatic buying of live inventory—especially for tentpole events like hockey.
MacDonald suggested that digital bidding behaviour already provides a kind of proxy for ratings, especially in high-demand scenarios. While Julie Kerr emphasized that for CBC, digital and linear are still treated as “two separate universes,” which makes it challenging to apply a unified viewership metric. However, she sees potential for ratings to play a bigger role in helping commercialize live inventory programmatically. Specifically, she suggests that if ratings could better signal what’s coming up in live programming, like hockey on a Sunday night, it could help platforms like The Trade Desk and agencies adjust their algorithms to buy more effectively in those time slots.
Josh Nathan summed up this part of the discussion with a provocative idea:
“If it's live and there's a spike in content, we need to be able to adjust to that and actually execute in a smarter way. So the more intelligence there is on what viewership looks like in real time, the smarter buying can become.”
Final thoughts: a smarter, unified future
Despite the challenges, there was a shared sense of optimism and urgency. AI is helping clean and standardize data, giving teams more time to solve bigger problems. Agencies are investing in infrastructure. Platforms are opening up slowly. And while a unified video budget may remain a dream for now, the desire for collaborative, outcome-focused planning is stronger than ever.
Key takeaways
- TV is now a platform-agnostic concept, shaped more by screen quality and engagement than delivery method.
- Fragmentation is the new norm, making scale and reach harder to achieve and measure.
- Solutions are starting to emerge. NLogic and Numeris were both acknowledged as key players helping to accelerate progress, by enabling faster, more integrated insights and building the foundational infrastructure for third-party verification and attribution.
- AI and centralized data strategies are creating real momentum but remain costly and complex for smaller players.
- New ratings paradigms must blend algorithmic personalization with actionable, real-time signals to support both audience and advertiser needs.
As the media landscape continues to evolve, staying ahead means embracing innovation, collaboration, and data-driven decision-making. We’re excited about what’s ahead and remain committed to driving the growth of smarter, more effective cross-platform solutions.