Corus Linking Up With Rogers, Shaw and CBC for Online Ad Revenue

By: Kuljit Grewal  |   August 1st, 2012   |   Business, News, O Canada

An alliance known as the Canadian Premium Audience Exchange (CPAX) has been forged between some of Canada’s largest broadcasting companies. Toronto’s Corus Entertainment Inc. has buddied up with Rogers Communications Inc., Shaw Communications Inc. the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) in order to take advantage of their joint resources to increase online advertising revenue.

 

The alliance will allow online advertisers to bid on unsold display space in real time based on specific groups of web users. Corus brings a valuable portfolio of demographic specific websites for its television interests including YTV, Treehouse, W Network, the Oprah Winfrey Network, CMT and HBO Canada among others.

 

According to the Financial Post and Forrester Research, such exchanges have become increasingly common as online advertising revenue becomes a bigger part of companies advertising budgets combined with the expansion of technology. The type of real-time bidding mentioned above accounts for nearly 20% of online display marketing this year, up 9% year over year.

 

The partnership represents a way to increase revenues in one area of business while others fall prey to the widespread use of internet television services such as Netflix, Apple TV and Google TV.  The changes in how viewers watch TV has affected Rogers and Shaw, who have shareholders to appease to.

 

Corus’ voting majority is held by none other than James Shaw and his family, the owners of Shaw Communications Inc., making the union a personally profitable one for him.

 

Although exchanges such as this have become increasingly popular, there are concerns regarding user demographic data. CPAX does not plan on collecting user data as aggressively as other exchanges due to the fact that so many of their websites cater to specific demographics.