Discoverability through the eyes of Canadian audiences

CMF publishes second part of report on content discoverability

Vancouver, October 3, 2016 – The Canada Media Fund (CMF) announced today the publication of its latest report entitled Discoverability: Toward a Common Frame of Reference - Part 2: The Audience Journey, at a Vancouver International Film Festival Industry Exchange event. To access the report, please click here.

The report is financed by the CMF, the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) and Telefilm Canada, with the support of CBC/Radio-Canada and their syndicated study - the Media Technology Monitor (MTM). Prepared by Danielle Desjardins of La Fabrique de sens, it builds on the findings reported in Part 1, released ahead of the Discoverability Summit in May of this year.

Part 1 of the report established an inventory of key content discoverability levers – from institutional levers like Canadian content rules and funding to industrial levers like recommendation engines and algorithms. This second part of the report released today explores discoverability in greater depth through the eyes of Canadian audiences.

Canadian viewers face a huge array of choices every day. Consumers now have unprecedented control over their media consumption process and access to a variety of connected devices, online platforms, applications and services. The research, based on an MTM survey conducted in the spring of 2016, sheds light on how consumers learn about the existence of content, how they make their choices and provides a discussion of audiences’ main discoverability vectors.

• Key survey findings indicate that 59 per cent of Canadian TV viewers aged 18+ discover new TV content through recommendations from friends. Just over a third of respondents stated that it was easy to find new TV content they wanted to watch, whereas a majority considered discoverability more or less challenging.
• Internet TV viewers and heavy television viewers found the process of discovering new TV content easier.
• Perhaps related to the overabundance of English language content, 27 per cent of English-speakers found the process of discoverability more difficult, compared to 14 per cent of French-speakers.
• The X, Y and Z generations (the 18 to 49-year-olds) rely on their friends for discovery, whereas baby boomers rely more on TV and radio commercials. Word-of-mouth is still the main discoverability method. But this may change due to social media channels, which are increasingly used by younger audiences through their mobile devices.

The report concludes that, in order to succeed in a world of overabundance, tomorrow’s content may seek to use cognitive technologies to match viewers’ tastes with precision, to personalize each viewer’s preferences, or to create content in real time to suit the personality of each viewer.

About the Canada Media Fund
The Canada Media Fund (CMF) fosters, develops, finances and promotes the production of Canadian content and applications for all audiovisual media platforms. The CMF guides Canadian content towards a competitive global environment by fostering industry innovation, rewarding success, enabling a diversity of voice and promoting access to content through public and private sector partnerships. The CMF receives financial contributions from the Government of Canada and Canada’s cable, satellite and IPTV distributors. Please visit cmf-fmc.ca.

For more information, please contact:

André Ferreira
Communications Manager
416-554-2768
[email protected]