OTTAWA — Reassurances and warnings about the digital era greeted attendees at the Prime Time conference on Thursday, as kick-off speaker Brent Lowe-Bernie delivered the message that ‘The sky is not falling.’

Though that should be qualified. Like everything else in a binary world, there is a counterpoint.

Canadians, added the president of the consumer marketing company comScore, need to seize the digital day.

‘People will go to where the content is,’ Lowe-Bernie told the crowd on the first day of the annual CFTPA conference. ‘They will pursue it, and they will consume it. We don’t have a digital plan like other countries do and it’s a shame because we lead the world in usage in many ways. In engagement, we rate right at the top.’

He noted that — while the only media currently growing in Canada is online — creatives should be reassured by the fact that filmed content is leading the way. Year-over-year Internet video consumption has grown by 200%, and 90% of Canadians now watch at least one video online every month.

Thus the opportunity, and the warning.

Distribution silos are a thing of the past — content has to play across all screens organically, and that means cross-platform has to be woven in from the beginning and not just bolted on afterwards.

‘How can you build new audiences?’ Lowe-Bernie asked rhetorically. ‘Are there ways to find them and entertain them wherever they are? You have to think about leveraging all the distribution channels.

‘People will consume as makes sense to them.’

He also had a warning for those who think that Twitter and its ilk are a flash in the pan: social media is here to stay — and that’s a good thing for traditional media.

‘There is no question there is an affinity between entertainment and social media,’ he explained. Facebook, he demonstrated, is already driving users to traditional media sites — more than 1.4 million to CTVglobemedia alone last year, to name but one example.

To help seize the advantage of this holistic approach to media, he recommended cross-platform experimentation, informed by the precise measurement tools offered on the digital platforms.

‘You must measure from the start,’ he cautioned, ‘and know how to measure it.’

Despite all the uncertainty, he summed, Canadians shouldn’t be worried. As always, timeliness and relevancy of content will drive usage — as long as the industry is prepared to step up.

‘Embrace the Canadian opportunity,’ he added.