The top ten advertisers spent $177,147 in Canada last week, rounding out the final week of May. In this edition of Cost Per Canadian, we take a look at a new third-party ad rocketing up the spending charts in BC, some of the eighty ads that the Federal Conservatives are running across the country and compare the spending by the Government of Alberta on ads about wildfire safety and reframing their proposed changes to the Alberta Health Service.

Look out for our special edition wrapping up all spending from May, which will land in your inbox tomorrow.

Frazer, Digital Director. Point Blank

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Seven-Day Ad Spend
(24th May - 30th May)

Seven-Day Ad Spend By Federal Party
(24th May - 30th May)

Noted:

A new third-party attack ad started climbing the spending charts in British Columbia, but its sights are locked on the wrong target. Project for a Strong BC’s new ad focuses on BC United (nee: BC Liberals) leader Kevin Falcon and Conservative Party of BC leader John Rustad, linking them to the former British Columbia Premier Christy Clark, who has been out of office for nearly a decade. Their daily spend is around ~$1,100, which will likely make them the second-highest spender in the province by this time next week.

The clear and present danger for campaigns wanting to secure BC for the BC NDP is John Rustad’s Conservatives, despite more than half of respondents in a recent survey being unable to identify him in a photo. They’ve been riding on the wave of support for the Federal Conservative party and rising in the polls to come within 8pts of the projected lead as of the time of writing.

On the other hand, BC United is in danger of losing 3rd place to the BC Green Party despite spending an eye-watering amount of money on TV ads during the NHL season. Popularity for the party has never recovered from their rebrand last year, prominent candidates have been jumping ship and attempts to link themselves to the “Axe The Tax“ movement have been broadly unsuccessful. At this stage, the odds of Kevin Falcon being ousted before the election are higher than him being the leader of the opposition.

The danger of focusing attack ads on BC United and the BC Conservative Party is that these ads could inadvertently bolster the BC Conservatives by reducing the vote split on the right and centralizing support around a single candidate. Instead, a safer proposition would be to take this opportunity to define the messaging around John Rustad, ensuring the NDP maintains a stronger overall position.

The Federal Conservatives launched new ads at the end of last week. They follow the same pattern as almost all of the ads that we’ve seen on their page in recent memory (faux polls and surveys as a funnel to collect people’s contact information). However, they are testing a new attack vector against the Trudeau government: ‘tent cities.‘ At the time of writing, the party now has ~80 active ads running in various target areas nationwide, with several themes:

The Government of Alberta has been fighting fires for the last few weeks, but unfortunately, it’s mostly the ones they set in their backyard. They’ve spent somewhere between $55k and $65k on ads attempting to reframe their divisive proposed changes to the Alberta Health System as good for the province. This contrasts with their other ads focusing on wildfire safety, which have only spent between $6k and $8k despite launching on the same day.

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 with what the rest of Canada is seeing.

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