Media representatives — NAICS 54184 industry report

01

Size and shape

How many businesses there are and how small they are. Fragmentation is the first thing an entrant — or anyone selling software into this industry — needs to know, and it is one of the few things that is actually measured.

Canadian establishments by number of employeesA

1–426482%

5–93411%

10–19124%

20–4982%

50–9931%

100–19910%

200–4990—

500+0—

Of 322 Canadian establishments with employees, 93% have fewer than ten — an industry of very small operators.

Where they areA

Ontario16250%

British Columbia6219%

Quebec5517%

Alberta247%

Largest four provinces by establishment count. Establishments with employees only — sole operators with no payroll are not in this table, so in trades and personal services the true number of businesses is higher.

How many new establishments are still tradingA

Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services, US · opened 2020

83.3%

1 year

64%

3 years

50.8%

5 years

34.3%

10 years

opened 2015

Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.

02

How businesses here compete

The structural profile of subsector 541, which every industry beneath it inherits. This is analyst judgment from how the subsector is organised — not research into this industry, and not a measurement.

regional competitionlow capitalUNVERIFIEDinherited from 541 Professional, scientific and technical services

Professional licensing is the barrier and the principal's time is the ceiling. Firms are built from a book of clients, and an aging partner group makes acquisition and succession the common entry.

Who sets the price: The firm, by reputation, against hourly-rate comparison.
The software it runs on: Practice management, time and billing, and a specialist tool per profession — the densest vertical-software territory in the economy.

03

Market screens and studies

Market-entry records filed along this branch of the hierarchy. A record at or beneath this code is about this industry; one above it is about something wider that contains it.

Screened one level up. Nothing is filed at this exact code; the screen for 5418 Advertising, public relations, and related services covers it.

Vertical softwareScreenedfiled at 5418

Agency Operations & Ad-Ops SoftwareOne thing must be true

binding constraint: willingness to pay

Incumbent Deltek (WorkBook, Vantagepoint) and Adobe Workfront

Agencies are the buyer most likely to solve this with a horizontal tool they already have — the project-management record at 541514 is the competitor here as much as Deltek is. Margins are thin, procurement is the founder, and the specialist premium over a generic tool is hard to defend at renewal. Nothing is disclosed here. Every vendor named on this record is private, or sits inside a parent that does not break the line out, so no revenue floor can be built and the market size is genuinely unknown rather than estimated.

NAICS 54183 vendors namedOpen →

Operating businessScreenedfiled at 541850

Out-of-Home AdvertisingStructure decides

binding constraint: capital intensity

The asset is the structure and the permit, not the sales relationship. Three listed operators — Lamar at $2.27B, OUTFRONT at $1.83B and Clear Channel Outdoor at $1.60B — hold the inventory that national advertisers buy, and new billboard permits are restricted or banned outright in most North American municipalities, which is what makes the existing faces worth owning. An entrant cannot build supply and cannot buy it at a price that clears. The digital half is where the growth is: OUTFRONT alone booked $649M of digital revenue in 2025.

NAICS 5418504 vendors named6 sourced figuresOpen →

Vertical softwareScreenedfiled at 541850

Programmatic DOOH & Digital Signage SoftwareOne thing must be true

binding constraint: incumbent vulnerability

Incumbent Broadsign (Canadian — Montréal)

This category consolidated out from under new entrants in under three years, and the buyers were strategics rather than sponsors. Perion bought Hivestack — Canadian, Montréal — for about US$100M; T-Mobile bought Vistar Media in 2025; and in November 2025 Broadsign, also Montréal, bought Place Exchange in its fourth acquisition in seven years, ending with roughly 1.8 million programmatically transactable screens and 370 staff. Note the Canadian concentration: two of the three platforms that defined programmatic DOOH were built in Montréal, which makes this the strongest domestic comparable in this research — and both are now inside larger owners. The exit path is real and the independent path has closed.

NAICS 5418504 vendors named5 sourced figuresOpen →

04

Software serving this industry

The vertical software markets filed along the same branch — who sells to these businesses and who they would have to displace — and then the generic categories every business buys whatever it does.

Sold across the wider branch

Vertical softwareScreenedfiled at 5418 Advertising, public relations, and related services

Agency Operations & Ad-Ops SoftwareOne thing must be true

binding constraint: willingness to pay

Incumbent Deltek (WorkBook, Vantagepoint) and Adobe Workfront

Agencies are the buyer most likely to solve this with a horizontal tool they already have — the project-management record at 541514 is the competitor here as much as Deltek is. Margins are thin, procurement is the founder, and the specialist premium over a generic tool is hard to defend at renewal. Nothing is disclosed here. Every vendor named on this record is private, or sits inside a parent that does not break the line out, so no revenue floor can be built and the market size is genuinely unknown rather than estimated.

NAICS 54183 vendors namedOpen →

And what every business buys · 25 generic categories

Sold to every industry rather than this one, so they are filed against the software industry's own code. The same few vendors recur across most of them.

05

Who works here

The occupations employed in Professional, scientific and technical services, most concentrated in it first. The share is measured against the whole sector, not this industry — the published cross-tabulation stops there.

Concentrated in this sectorA

Judges, lawyers and Quebec notaries One industry 71.1%

Computer, software and Web designers and developers Mostly one sector 55.4%

Architects, urban planners and land surveyors Mostly one sector 54.7%

Technical occupations in architecture, drafting, surveying, geomatics and meteorology Mostly one sector 51.2%

Photographers and support occupations in arts and culture Mostly one sector 50.3%

Graphic and interior designers Mostly one sector 48.9%

Civil and mechanical engineers Mostly one sector 45.2%

Electrical, electronics and computer engineers Mostly one sector 40.3%

Managers in engineering, architecture, science and information systems Mostly one sector 40.2%

Natural resources engineers Mostly one sector 39.2%

These jobs are mostly done here. An operator in this industry is competing for them against others in the same industry, not against the whole economy.

And the jobs every business has

Technical occupations in computer and information systems Across the economy 29.6%

Accounting, insurance and related business administrative occupations Across the economy 24.9%

Technical inspectors and regulatory officers Across the economy 23.1%

Office administrative assistants - general, legal and medical Across the economy 16.8%

Financial, insurance and related administrative support workers Across the economy 16.6%

Legislative and senior managers Across the economy 16.2%

Technical occupations in electronics and electrical engineering Across the economy 11.8%

Survey, statistical and data entry occupations Across the economy 11.5%

Administrative services managers Across the economy 10.7%

Administrative, property and payroll officers Across the economy 9%

Found across at least fourteen of the twenty sectors. But note the shape of this industry: 93% of establishments have fewer than ten employees, and at that size most of these roles are one person wearing several hats, or bought in from outside.

All 162 occupations →

06

Inside this industry

1 row sits directly beneath 54184. Each has a base report of its own.

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
541840	Media representatives	322	screened at 5418

Alongside it, under 5418 Advertising, public relations, and related services

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
54181	Advertising agencies	3,218	screened at 5418
54182	Public relations services	688	screened at 5418
54183	Media buying agencies	133	screened at 5418
54185	Display advertising	483	Out-of-Home Advertising Programmatic DOOH & Digital Signage Software
54186	Direct mail advertising	94	screened at 5418
54187	Advertising material distribution services	145	screened at 5418
54189	Other services related to advertising	1,277	screened at 5418