For the first time since we started Cost Per Canadian, the Conservative Party of Canada are not the highest-spending federal party. Read about the ads all three parties are currently running and about a run of “scrap the cap” ads from the Alberta government that are spilling out into the rest of Canada.

Frazer, Digital Director. Point Blank

Seven-Day Ad Spend
(16th November - 22nd November)

Seven-Day Ad Spend By Federal Party
(8th November - 14th November)

Noted

The Conservative Party of Canada has been unseated from their “highest-spending-party” spot, but they’re not slowing down. In a departure from the “Axe The Tax” and “Ban Mandatory Digital ID” messaging that they’ve been leaning on recently, their latest ad leans heavily on miscellaneous “woke ideology,” directly linking Justin Trudeau to:

• The Ottawa school that played an Arabic-language song during the school's Remembrance Day service.

• The new passport design, because it doesn’t include images of veterans or Terry Fox.

• Safe supply legislation.

• The use of the word “peoplekind” instead of “mankind.”

• Nati-NATO protesters that toppled statues and broke windows in Montreal.

The new number-one spender, the Liberal Party of Canada, continued the run of ads that we highlighted last week but significantly escalated their spending. In previous weeks, we reported their spending floating around $3,000 per week compared to this week’s ~$75k. Put another way, they spent more in the last seven days than they did during the months of July and August combined.

The three ads from Canada’s NDP that are active at the time of writing are all focused on growing their email list. All are focused on abortion access as their key message, with one setting the NDP’s policy in support of further access and two attacking Pierre Poilievre on his previous stances and statements against it.

The Alberta Government is spending large on their “Scrap the Cap” campaign, with ~$80k spent on Meta ads attacking the Trudeau government. This is in addition to what we estimate to be an easily six-figure investment in ads running on cable TV and elsewhere.

The ads are targeted explicitly at Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver, Halifax, Moncton and St John, as well as across Alberta, and deploy some fairly transparent links to existing messaging by the Conservative Party of Canada such as the use of “common sense” and the basic “scrap the cap” rhyming not at all dissimilar from “axe the tax”.

The digital advertising landscape in 2024 is so precisely targeted that for many people, it’s impossible to know which ads your neighbours, friends and family are being influenced by. We track the biggest spenders and high-profile campaigns every week on Meta, keeping you in the loop regarding what the rest of Canada is seeing.