At a time when media planning assumptions are being rebuilt, the most valuable thing a media partner can offer isn’t inventory. It’s trust and clarity.

Christopher Mercer, senior vice president of media sales and solutions at Corus Entertainment, has spent the past eight months bringing a CMO’s perspective to the sell side, and what he sees in the data runs counter to a dominant narrative.

“The biggest misconception I get, with clients and even agencies, is that viewers have moved away from linear to streaming,” he says. “That’s just not the case.” In fact, Numeris VAM data from Fall 2025 shows that approximately 70% of total ad supported video hours among adults 18+ still go to linear TV.

For Canadian media buyers heading into the 2026 Upfronts, Mercer says that number should be the starting point for every conversation Corus wants to have.

Further Numeris VAM data from Fall 2025 tells a similar story at the household level: only 13% of adult Canadians stream video content exclusively, while approximately 31% watch linear TV exclusively and 56% watch both. What that tells Mercer is that Canadians aren’t abandoning television. They’re layering.

“What our data shows is that Canadians are not leaving TV. They’re rebalancing across live TV, on-demand TV and ad-supported streaming, with the same household often having multiple modes of viewing throughout the week.”

The problem, he says, is that most planning frameworks haven’t caught up to that reality. As audiences spread across platforms, fragmentation has become both a challenge and an opportunity. Mercer says the risk for buyers is chasing micro-audiences across dozens of narrow environments without a coherent reach strategy, resulting in wasted frequency and saturated impressions.

“You run the risk of the same people seeing way too many impressions,” Mercer explains. “Understanding pacing and frequency, and having the governance around frequency caps when you’re dealing with a fragmented market, that’s important for a good viewing experience.”

The antidote, he says, is building plans that start with an audience objective, not a channel objective. “The best plans orchestrate TV in totality, linear and streaming together, rather than treating them as separate. When a buyer stops choosing a pipe and starts thinking about TV and video overall [it’s] a massive unlock for their marketing objectives.”

Corus’s audience insights suggest a different way to think about reach. The media company’s StackTV is a subscription-based streaming service, and the Global TV App is a TV everywhere service; according to Mercer, together the platforms attract fundamentally different viewers. Case in point: a Numeris VAM analysis of a four-week campaign period in November 2025, layering a combined StackTV and Global TV App buy over a standard Corus linear TV package results in more than half (55%) of those digital viewers being unduplicated with the linear audience.

In practice, that means a buyer investing across the Corus ecosystem is reaching a meaningfully larger, unduplicated audience than a single-platform buy would suggest.

“Having the ability to work with Corus in a way where you get well-planned, unduplicated reach and reasonable frequency across the Corus environment makes us a pretty strong partner when it comes to delivering on a lot of your needs,” Mercer says.

The planning implication is direct: in a fragmented market, don’t assume any single streaming platform can solve the reach needs of a broad national campaign. Instead, build for unduplicated reach across environments and measure accordingly.

The approach holds up in practice. When infant formula brand Niuriss needed to reach Canadian millennials who were pregnant or planning to become parents, Corus built its strategy around a precisely defined audience segment: households with children under age five.

From there, Corus activated that segment across its full portfolio, spanning linear and streaming, ensuring each impression was placed intentionally rather than broadly. The campaign achieved 50% direct site sales during the flight, a result that reflects the discipline of audience-first planning rather than channel-first buying.

For buyers looking to close the loop between brand exposure and conversion, Corus’s NextScreen product transforms standard video creative into interactive, shoppable ad experiences that let consumers act without leaving the ad environment. Performance is tracked across the full purchase journey, from QR code scans and interaction rates through to add-to-cart and checkout, giving buyers both top and bottom-funnel visibility within a single campaign.

As buyers head into upfront conversations, Mercer’s advice cuts through the noise: stop negotiating on CPMs in isolation and start thinking in terms of total video outcomes.

“Get a single cross-platform plan with clear goals, frequency guardrails, a commitment to premium co-viewing environments where possible, and an approach to measuring attention and outcomes,” he says. “The world is moving away from rate cards toward performance-backed investments, and that’s a good thing, because it allows you to move fluidly across linear and streaming.”

For Mercer, the case for Corus ultimately comes back to the data: Canadian audiences are still watching television in large numbers, they are doing so across more surfaces than ever, and the buyers who understand that distinction will be better positioned heading into fall.

“Corus is an ideal environment for a business to tell their brand story in a really contextual, relevant environment,” he says. “You get unduplicated reach, the ability to leverage linear and streaming in a way where they truly complement each other, and that’s proven by the data.”

For more information on Corus and their advertising solutions visit https://www.corusent.com/advertising/