PPC Pricing in Canada: An Honest 2026 Guide

Many agencies bill management as a percentage of ad spend (typically 10–20%) with a fee floor (typically C$1,500–C$2,500/month minimum). This structure aligns agency revenue with client spend but can create misalignment when the agency is incentivised to grow spend rather than improve return.

• Sub-C$1,000/month: typically templated campaign setup with limited ongoing optimisation. Suitable for very small ad spend (<C$2,000/month) where the management work is correspondingly small.
• C$1,000–C$2,500/month: SMB-tier active management. Typically 10–20 hours/month of work. Suitable for ad spend up to ~C$15,000/month.
• C$2,500–C$6,500/month: established SMB and lower mid-market. Multi-channel work, conversion-rate optimisation involvement, structured testing. Suitable for ad spend C$10,000–C$50,000/month.
• C$6,500+/month: mid-market and enterprise. Dedicated strategist, custom reporting, attribution work, programmatic and feed-management work. Suitable for ad spend C$50,000+/month.

• Personal injury law (Toronto): C$80–C$200+ CPC; some keywords exceed C$300.
• Family law (GTA): C$25–C$80 CPC.
• Cosmetic dentistry (Toronto): C$15–C$45 CPC.
• Plumbing and emergency home services (Toronto): C$15–C$45 CPC.
• HVAC (Toronto): C$10–C$35 CPC.
• B2B SaaS (Canadian software companies): C$8–C$25 CPC.
• E-commerce (general consumer goods): C$0.80–C$5 CPC.
• Insurance (auto, home, life): C$25–C$120 CPC.
• Mortgage and lending: C$15–C$60 CPC.
• Healthcare (cosmetic surgery, fertility, addiction treatment): C$30–C$150 CPC.

Below certain spend floors, PPC programs cannot generate enough data for the algorithms to optimise effectively. The realistic minimums:

• Local-services SMB (single location, single service): C$1,500/month minimum to reach reasonable data volume.
• Multi-service local SMB (e.g., dental practice with multiple service lines): C$3,500/month minimum.
• B2B lead generation: C$5,000/month minimum to gather enough conversion signal for optimisation.
• E-commerce with broad product range: C$3,000/month minimum at launch; scaling to C$10,000+ for serious growth.
• Brand defence (against competitor bidding on your brand): C$500–C$1,500/month is often sufficient.

A credible agency will ask three questions before quoting: what is your customer LTV, what is your current cost per acquisition, and what is your monthly volume of qualified-lead capacity. The answers determine the realistic monthly ad spend ceiling — spending beyond that ceiling produces leads the business cannot service.

A less credible agency will quote a management fee without asking these questions, or will encourage maximum-possible spend regardless of the business's lead-handling capacity.

PPC is ideal for: launching new products needing immediate traffic, defending against competitor brand bidding, capturing high-commercial-intent queries with predictable per-lead economics, and bridging the gap while SEO compounds.

SEO is ideal for: long-term asset building, lower per-click economics over time, defending against PPC cost inflation, and capturing top-of-funnel research traffic that doesn't have viable paid economics. Most established Canadian businesses run both simultaneously rather than choosing.