Lexicon entryEffectiveness frame · CMUST 2025

Post Digital Media Age

The third era of advertising’s relationship with digital — defined less by share of spend than by what the industry has stopped believing about cheap CPMs, last-click attribution, and lookalike-only targeting.

Chris Gardner — Digital Marketing Consultant, USA TODAY NETWORK | LOCALiQ. Founder, Signostic. Windsor, ON. Last updated 3 May 2026 · About · LinkedIn · Email

Direct answer

The Post Digital Media Age is the third era of advertising’s relationship with digital. After the Early Commercial Internet (2001–2008, digital at 14% of ad spend) and the Digital Media Age (2009–2018, digital at 56%), the Post Digital Media Age (2019 onward) sits at 77% — but is defined less by share and more by what the industry has stopped believing.

What it is

A methodology era, not a channel era.

The Post Digital Media Age names the moment the Digital Media Age’s foundational assumptions stopped being treated as truths.

PHD Canada’s 2025 Canadian Media Usage Study formalises a three-era frame for advertising’s relationship with digital. The Early Commercial Internet (2001–2008) saw digital at 14% of ad spend — banner ads, display networks, the rise of search. The Digital Media Age (2009–2018) brought digital to 56% on the back of three load-bearing promises: precise audience targeting, closed-loop attribution, and low CPMs. The Post Digital Media Age (2019 onward) has digital at 77% of total ad spend (67% among major agencies) — but the era is defined by the methodology shifts the industry has accepted, not by the share figure.

Three shifts mark the boundary. First, from spend efficiency to spend effectiveness: the era has accepted that low CPMs measure cost per unit of activity, not business outcomes, and that optimising the first does not produce the second. Second, from attribution-led measurement to holistic measurement: attribution is now treated as one input alongside marketing-mix modelling, brand tracking, and Share of Search analysis, rather than the truth. Third, from in-market targeting to audience frameworks: most growth comes from light and non-buyers who are not in-market today but might be tomorrow, weighted by category entry points and mental availability requirements rather than by intent signals alone.

Era	Period	Digital share of ad spend
Early Commercial Internet	2001–2008	14%
Digital Media Age	2009–2018	56%
Post Digital Media Age	2019 →	77% (67% major agencies)

Most SMB and mid-market digital strategy is still operating in 2015 logic. Agencies still pitch cheap CPMs. Owners still ask for last-click ROAS reports. Pitch decks still feature lookalike audience targeting as if it were a strategic insight rather than a default checkbox. The rituals of Digital Media Age strategy are still being performed — but the market they were calibrated for is gone. The diagnostic question is not whether a brand is “doing digital” but whether the methodology behind the digital work has updated.

Diagnostic implication

The framing reset is the first deliverable.

Any prospect anchored on CPM, CPC, last-click ROAS, or lookalike-only targeting is running Digital Media Age methodology in a Post Digital Media Age market. The conversation about budget allocation, channel mix, or vendor selection cannot land usefully until the underlying frame has been updated — which means the framing reset is the first deliverable in any honest engagement, before any tactical recommendation.

The three-shift test

1. Is success measured on effectiveness (business outcomes), not just efficiency (cost per click)? 2. Is measurement holistic (attribution + MMM + brand tracking), not just last-click attribution? 3. Does the audience plan reach light and non-buyers, not just in-market lookalikes?

If the answer to any of the three is “no,” the methodology is calibrated for an era that ended in 2018. The same budget, allocated by Post Digital Media Age principles, will outperform a Digital Media Age allocation in any category measured. The constraint is not the budget — it is the framework being used to deploy it.

Primary sources

Where this definition comes from.

Referenced in this entry

PHD Canada. Canadian Media Usage Study (CMUST) 2025. December 2025. 22nd annual edition.
Binet, L. & Field, P. The Long and the Short of It: Balancing Short and Long-Term Marketing Strategies. Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA), 2013.
Sharp, B. How Brands Grow: What Marketers Don’t Know. Oxford University Press, 2010.
Romaniuk, J. Better Brand Health: Measures and Metrics for a How Brands Grow World. Oxford University Press, 2023.
Nelson-Field, K. The Attention Economy and How Media Works. Routledge, 2020.

Get a diagnosis

If you want to know whether your current digital strategy is still calibrated for the Digital Media Age — and which methodology shifts would unlock material upside on the same budget — Chris Gardner runs every audit personally. Findings translate into strategy — execution runs through LocaliQ when you’re ready.