Digital Rocks for the Canadian Back-to-School Shopper -Vividata reports

Before we turn our attention to the Holiday Shopping season, we wanted to reflect on back-to-school and how digital media is becoming the “it” channel for back-to-school shopping.

Vividata brought the receipts – their latest Summer 2025 SCC/Digital release reveals that 4.1 million Canadians take part in back-to-school shopping events each year, both online and in-store. Notably, 1.5 million of these shoppers are weekly online buyers, 22% more likely than the average Canadian to shop digitally. For advertisers, this represents a highly engaged audience that is primed for digital targeting in the lead-up to September.

Where Canadian families are shopping

The research shows that convenience and one-stop shopping define the season. Nearly 90% of back-to-school shoppers use a mass retailer’s website or app monthly. The leading platforms are:

  • Amazon – 3.3M monthly visitors (81% reach)
  • Walmart – 1.7M monthly visitors (41%)
  • Canadian Tire – 1.2M monthly visitors (29%)
  • Costco – 813K monthly visitors (20%)

While younger consumers are more likely to engage with electronics and fashion categories, shoppers aged 50+ are driving the highest usage of mass retailer platforms, particularly Costco, where they are 26% more likely than the average back-to-school shopper to shop digitally.

Back-to-School retail category trends

  • Beauty & Wellness: Ages 35–49 over-index for platforms like Shoppers Drug Mart and Sephora, with app use driving Sephora traffic.
  • Fashion: Fast-fashion players Shein and H&M are performing strongly, alongside Canadian favourites like Mark’s and Lululemon.
  • Electronics: Microsoft (35%), Apple (31%), and BestBuy (18%) lead the pack for digital engagement.

These patterns reflect diverse household needs (clothing and accessories to health and electronics) that present advertisers with clear category-specific opportunities.

Winning Back-to-School

Back-to-school is a critical retail period. With digital penetration accelerating, advertisers who managed to align messaging and placements with these shopping behaviours were most likely to win big during one the busiest spending windows of the year.

Next up is Holiday Shopping – Join the Skills Lab on September 11th in Toronto to learn how to win the Holiday Season with digital advertising.