newsletter: ad nation 2026
September 17, 2026
Mind the (Media) Gap: New Ipsos Research Shows How the Ad Industry Still Misreads How Canadians Use Media
Ad industry professionals think 89% of Canadians use TikTok. The real number is 30%
The fourth edition of the thinktv / Ipsos Ad Nation research highlights the ongoing gap between how Canadians use and perceive media and how ad industry professionals do. The findings suggest that assumptions about consumer behaviour continue to be influenced by the industry’s own media habits and experiences. If you work in marketing, your media habits probably look nothing like your customers’.
See the full results HERE
Industry Assumptions Don’t Always Reflect Public Reality
One of the clearest examples involves TikTok. While 30% of Canadians reported using TikTok in the past month, industry professionals estimated public usage at 89%, a gap of 59 percentage points. Similar patterns emerged across streaming services, digital platforms, and artificial intelligence tools.
Industry professionals are significantly more likely than Canadians to own streaming devices, subscribe to streaming services, and adopt emerging technologies. These differences help explain why perceptions of consumer behaviour can diverge from what Canadians say they actually do.
Trust in Advertising Remains Largely Unchanged
Among Canadians, distrust of advertising remains remarkably consistent. Today, 29% say they do not trust any advertising, compared with 30% a decade ago* Canadians’ top concerns include how personal data is being collected and used. When it comes to AI-generated advertising, misleading or fake content ranks highest among perceived risks.
A Significant Disconnect on Social Media Advertising
Both groups agree that social media advertising can be misleading, low quality, and untrustworthy. Yet industry professionals are substantially more likely than the Canadian public to “like” advertising on social media platforms. Industry respondents also report that social media advertising is more likely to deliver attention and make people want to buy a product. The Canadian public disagrees. Canadians rate TV number one for both of those attributes.
Canadians Continue to Value Television
Canadians continue to be drawn to live television, enjoying the shared viewing experience with family and friends, to avoid spoilers, and to participate in cultural moments as they happen.
Why It Matters
This research makes a simple point that’s easy to forget: we are not the audience. The gap between what media professionals and Canadians do is wide, and it shows up in the assumptions behind many media plans. Mark Ritson calls it the first rule of marketing: you are not the customer. We’ve now run this research four times over nearly a decade, and the gap hasn’t closed. Ad Nation is an important reminder for all of us that an accurate understanding of the market takes deliberate effort, built on evidence, not assumptions.
* from previous Ad Nation research (2017-2023)