Canadian Online Ads Top $1B

What’s happening with the online ad market in Canada? For whatever reason, the market surged last year by 80% to a record $1.01-billion – driven by a 120% spike in classifieds to $272-million, a 79% rise in search to $353-million and a 58% jump in display to $364-million. It’s like many Canadian advertisers suddenly realized the Internet had finally become a viable and attractive medium after sitting on the sidelines for far too many years. Still, if you do some back-of-the-napkin calculations, the Canadian market is still only two-thirds that of the U.S. market if you use the traditional 10:1 ratio formula.

With a year of robust growth behind it, IAB Canada expects the market will grow by another 32% in 2007 to $1.34-billion. ” “While it took us 13 years from when the first banner was served on the Internet, until now, to reach the billion dollar mark in Canada, it may only take us another two to three years to reach the second billion,” said IAB Canada president Paula Gignac. “Fascinating times indeed.”

One thing that strong growth has caused is huge demand for experienced online salespeople. If you look around, everyone – including the big guys such as Yahoo, MSN, Sympatico and AOL – is hiring. The problem, however, if you’re looking to hire is supply is limited, especially if you want someone with a few years of online sales under their belt. At b5media, we were lucky a couple of months ago to snag Chad Randall as our sales director.