Google Ads PPC averages $5.15 CPC. Pre-Roll Video is bought on CPM only, averaging $14.25. Analysis for Canada in 2026.
Canada is a smaller but disproportionately mature digital ad market, with digital share of total media spend tracking close to US levels. Google and Meta dominate, but Canadian advertisers contend with two important wrinkles: French-language obligations in Quebec (Bill 96 enforcement has tightened) and CASL, one of the world's strictest anti-spam laws. CPMs typically run 5-10% below the US, reflecting a smaller auction pool and lower absolute population. The market is also unusually concentrated geographically — Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver account for the majority of high-value commercial audiences, which makes geo-targeting more efficient than national campaigns for most verticals.
Search advertising on Google - pay per click on search results
Video ads that play before online content
The auction, the creative, the budget floor — the three things you actually need to know before picking a platform.
Google Ads runs a real-time second-price auction on every search query. You pay per click, and your effective CPC is a function of your bid, Quality Score, and competitor bids — high-intent commercial keywords (finance, legal, insurance) can 5-10x the platform average because auction density is brutal.
Responsive Search Ads: up to 15 headlines (30 chars each), 4 descriptions (90 chars each). Google mixes them dynamically. Sitelinks, callouts, and structured snippets are effectively required to stay competitive.
Budget floor to reach statistical signal: roughly $50–100/day per campaign, or $1.5K–3K/month per keyword theme. Below that, learning phase never stabilizes.
Pre-roll (the video ad before online video content, non-YouTube) is CPM-priced at $12–20, sold through DSPs against a video inventory pool separate from social. Skippable and non-skippable formats coexist; non-skippable commands a 20–30% CPM premium.
15s (most common), 6s bumper, or 30s. 1920×1080 16:9, 24 or 30fps, H.264. Captions and audio-off usability increasingly required as autoplay-muted becomes default.
$3K–5K/month for standalone pre-roll; often bundled with programmatic display or OTT in a single video-inclusive DSP buy.