| TL;DR: Digital channels are easy to skip, block, and scroll past. Arena advertising is not. Rec Media places brands inside Canadian recreation venues, where the average visit runs 65 minutes – the highest dwell time in place-based media – in a trusted community setting no ad blocker can touch. Seventy-eight percent (78%) of Canadians pay attention to out-of-home ads, ahead of every digital channel measured. For brands trying to reach families, arena advertising and a digital campaign are strongest together, not as substitutes. |
Reaching families online keeps getting harder. Ad blockers strip out the impression before it loads. Streaming viewers skip the pre-roll the second the button appears. Social feeds scroll past a brand in half a second.
None of that is a knock on digital advertising, which still does real work at the top of the funnel. But it does explain why a growing number of brands are putting part of their budget somewhere families can’t skip, block, or scroll away from: the arena.
A quick definition first. When we say “digital channels” here, we mean online display, paid social, search, and streaming video. We do not mean digital out-of-home, which is its own strength and part of Rec Media’s network. The comparison in this post is arena advertising against the online channels most brands over-index on.
Here are five reasons rink-side advertising keeps earning its place in the media mix.
Why can’t families skip arena advertising?
You can’t skip a rink board. You can’t block it, mute it, or scroll past it. It’s simply there, at eye level, for the length of the game.
Online, avoidance is the default. Roughly 912 million people worldwide run ad blockers, about a quarter of all internet users, and in the United States more than half of desktop users block ads outright.
Skippable video fares no better: the large majority of viewers skip the moment they can. Industry estimates put blocked digital ad revenue north of 50 billion dollars a year. COMMB, Canada’s out-of-home measurement body, describes out-of-home advertising as “tangible and unblockable” for exactly this reason. A parent in the stands has no skip button.
Arena advertising, including rink board advertising and lobby wallboards, lives in the physical room with the family. That’s the first structural advantage: it can’t be turned off.
How long do families actually spend with arena advertising?
Attention is the scarcest thing in advertising, and the arena has more of it than almost any screen.
Rec Media’s audience data puts the average arena visit at 65 minutes – the highest dwell time in place-based media. A single arena delivers roughly 180,000 ad impressions a year on average, and up to 215,000 in major markets, while metro indoor soccer venues draw over a million visitors annually.
A hockey parent arrives for a 6:45 a.m. practice, settles in for a game, waits through a sibling’s session, all with the same signage in view.
Compare that to digital display, where a meaningful share of impressions are never fully viewed and many that last under a second. Set against the sub-second life of a typical online impression, 65 minutes is a different order of attention entirely.
Arena advertising trades reach-at-any-cost for something rarer: dwell time with a captive, unhurried audience.
Why does a trusted community venue make advertising work harder?
Where an ad appears shapes how the brand is judged. Online, brands can’t always control what runs next to their message, and adjacency to low-quality or divisive content is a standing risk.
The arena is the opposite: a family venue, endorsed by the community, where parents already feel at ease.
That context pays off in attention. In COMMB-cited research, 78 percent of Canadians say they pay attention to out-of-home advertising – second only to TV, and ahead of every digital channel measured, including websites at 72 percent, social media at 66 percent, online video at 62 percent, and mobile apps at 60 percent.
COMMB also reports that younger audiences aged 18 to 34, the group hardest to reach online, are increasingly skeptical of digital ads. A brand on the rink board borrows the goodwill of the venue. A brand in a cluttered feed fights for it.
How does weekly exposure build brand memory?
Hockey season isn’t a single impression. It’s the same families, at the same rink, week after week, from fall through spring.
That repetition is real and measurable. Rec Media’s audience data shows 92 percent of arena visitors come at least weekly, and prime-time arena utilization routinely runs over 90 percent.
The pipeline behind it is steady: 603,000 kids were registered hockey players in the 2024–25 season, and 90 percent of those aged 5 to 16 return year over year.
A family that sees a brand at every practice and every game builds a familiarity that a one-time digital impression, glimpsed once and gone, rarely matches.
Weekly presence in a place families return to on their own turns a placement into a habit.
Which families does arena advertising reach?
The audience at a rink is self-selected in a way advertisers usually pay dearly to approximate, and it skews exactly where brands want to be.
Rec Media’s audience data shows 68 percent of arena visitors have household incomes over $100K, 76 percent are aged 25 to 49, 63 percent are university-educated, and half are professionals or executives.
These are active household spenders: gear, food, travel, insurance, services, and the everyday purchases that keep a busy family running.
There’s no retargeting, no cookie loss, no consent banner. The targeting is built into the venue.
Families come to the arena because they have families, which means the brand is reaching exactly the households it wants, in the room where those households already spend their time and money.
How does arena advertising fit alongside a digital campaign?
This is the part worth underlining: it isn’t arena versus digital. The strongest results come from running both.
COMMB’s own research shows that out-of-home advertising combined with online channels produces a marked increase in campaign effectiveness. Arena advertising anchors the brand in a trusted, unskippable, physical setting; digital extends the reach and follows up.
Rec Media’s digital out-of-home network sits right at that bridge, pairing the credibility of the venue with the flexibility of a screen. Used together, the arena builds the memory and digital keeps the conversation going.
For brands that sell what families buy, the question was never whether to advertise online. It’s whether an online-only plan is leaving the most attentive, most trusting audience of the week – the family in the stands – unreached. Rec Media’s hyper-local community advertising is built for exactly that gap.
Frequently asked questions
What is arena advertising?
Arena advertising places brand messages inside ice rinks and recreation venues, on rink board advertising, lobby wallboards, floor decals, door wraps, and digital screens.
Rec Media operates a network of these placements across Canadian arenas and community facilities, reaching families where they gather each week.
Is arena advertising more effective than digital advertising?
They measure success differently. Digital optimizes for cheap, broad reach; arena advertising optimizes for attention, trust, and dwell time in a venue families can’t skip.
COMMB-cited research finds 78 percent of Canadians pay attention to out-of-home ads – ahead of every digital channel measured – and 7 in 10 take action after seeing one.
The strongest campaigns use both.
Can people skip or block arena advertising?
No. Unlike online ads, which roughly a quarter of internet users block and most video viewers skip, a rink board or wallboard can’t be turned off, muted, or scrolled past. COMMB describes out-of-home advertising as tangible and unblockable.
What does Rec Media’s arena network include?
Rec Media’s ice rink network covers arenas across major North American markets, with formats including rink board advertising, wallboards, floor decals, door wraps, and digital out-of-home screens. Format selection depends on the venue and the campaign goal.
How is arena advertising measured?
Measurement combines venue attendance and dwell exposure with brand-lift studies, promo-code redemption, and landing-page tracking. For brands running arena and digital together, geo-matched lift studies comparing campaign markets to holdout markets are the cleanest read.
How much does arena advertising cost?
Pricing varies by format, venue, and campaign length. Multi-venue programs are often more cost-efficient on a cost-per-thousand basis than regional broadcast or national digital, with dwell time neither can match. Contact Rec Media for a quote against your specific audience.
