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Canada’s pay-TV market to reach saturation mark this year: Study
MUMBAI: Canada‘s pay-TV market is expected to reach the saturation point this year, compelling the country‘s cable, satellite and IPTV operators to seek new growth opportunities, according to an IHS Screen Digest Television Intelligence Monitor Market Report from information and analytics provider IHS.
After years of steady expansion, penetration of pay-TV subscriptions among Canadian television households is set to reach an all-time high of 92 per cent in 2012, as presented in the figure below. Subscription be marginalised due to some customers buying HSD from cable operators.
Shaw is continuing to bolster its satellite fleet with an upcoming satellite launch to add HD channel capacity.
Declines at Bell Satellite TV are to be expected, as the company transitions existing customers to its Fiber TV service. For Shaw Direct, however, its first recent quarterly decline comes as a surprise, especially since the company has not posted any declines since two consecutive quarters of decreases in the third and fourth quarters of 2004.
Overall, mixed quarterly results are to be expected, with satellite as a category expected to grow subscribers slowly through 2016.
IPTV plays to its strengths: IPTV players are in the best position in Canada‘s pay-TV market with several weapons in their arsenal, including capabilities to offer aggressive promotions, roll out fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) connections and expand the penetration of homes passed.
OTT not to kill cable ops: Despite the challenge posed by Netflix, IHS believes that Canadian pay-TV operators are better-positioned to fend off the threat from such OTT services. The majority of cable operators provide severe data caps that are easily reached with significant OTT video consumption.
By 2016, IHS expects Canadian pay-TV subscriptions to decline only slightly to 89.9 per cent of TV households.
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Inshorts Group chief Deepit Purkayastha joins IAB video council for Southeast Asia and India
The co-founder and chief executive of the short-form content platform has been inducted into the IAB SEA+India Video Council, giving India a stronger voice in shaping digital video frameworks
NOIDA: India has long been the world’s most chaotic, multilingual and mobile-first digital market. Now, one of its most prominent short-video executives is getting a seat at the table where the rules are written.
Deepit Purkayastha, co-founder and chief executive of Inshorts Group, has been selected as a member of the IAB SEA+India Video Council for 2026. Run by the Interactive Advertising Bureau, the council brings together senior leaders from Southeast Asia and India to shape standards, best practices and measurement frameworks for the fast-evolving video and digital advertising ecosystem.
The timing is pointed. According to the IAMAI-Kantar Internet in India Report 2025, over 588 million Indians are now consuming short-video content, with growth increasingly driven by rural and non-metro audiences. India’s active internet user base has crossed 950 million, with 57 per cent of users now coming from rural markets. Yet the frameworks that govern how video consumption is measured and monetised were largely designed for single-language, Western markets and have struggled to keep pace with the scale, diversity and complexity of India’s digital landscape.
Purkayastha is no stranger to these debates. He already serves on the AI Council at Marketing and Media Alliance India and as co-chair of the Digital Entertainment Committee at the Internet and Mobile Association of India. His induction into the IAB SEA+India Video Council extends that influence into the global video standards arena.
Inshorts Group sits squarely at the intersection of these forces. Its flagship product, Inshorts, India’s highest-rated short news app, reaches 12 million active users with 60-word news summaries. Its sister platform, Public App, reaches 80 million monthly active users across more than 700 districts and 12 languages, serving communities that most global platforms barely register.
Purkayastha said the opportunity was about building something more representative. “India today sits at the centre of the global video ecosystem, but the frameworks that define how value is created and measured have not always kept pace with the realities of our market,” he said. “Being part of the IAB SEA+India Video Council is an opportunity to contribute to a more representative and future-ready approach, one that accounts for diversity in language, context, and user intent.”
As a council member, Purkayastha will contribute to shaping regional standards across video advertising, measurement and platform governance, with a focus on frameworks that are native to India’s multilingual, mobile-first ecosystem rather than imported from global benchmarks designed elsewhere.
For years, India has been content to play by rules written for other markets. Purkayastha’s induction is a signal that it is done waiting to be consulted and ready to start writing them.
