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Cost Per Canadian for May 29th
Presented by Point Blank
Over the last seven days, $171,601 was spent by the top ten advertisers in Canada. In this edition of Cost Per Canadian, we’re looking at ad spending by the Ontario Progressive Conservatives and falling into a classic pitfall of crying wolf about a snap election. We also explore some new ads launched by the Federal New Democrats and Federal Conservatives.
Thank you to everyone who shared last week’s edition with their colleagues, friends and group chats, and welcome to those who just signed up.
Frazer, Digital Director. Point Blank
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Seven-Day Ad Spend
(18th May - 24th May)
Page | Spend | Affiliation |
|---|---|---|
$31,445 | ||
$25,312 | 🇨🇦 CA CPC | |
$21,970 | ||
$17,216 | ||
$15,444 | 🇨🇦 CA ON OPC | |
$13,581 | ||
$12,392 | ||
$12,095 | ||
$11,229 | 🇨🇦 CA ON GOVT | |
$10,917 |
Seven-Day Ad Spend By Federal Party
(18th May - 24th May)
Party | Spend |
|---|---|
Conservative Party of Canada Including spend by the leader. | $33,509 Steady (Up 1%) |
Liberal Party of Canada Including spend by the leader. | $3,329 Down 26% |
New Democratic Party of Canada Including spend by the leader. | ≤$166 Up ~200% |
Noted:
An Ontario Progressive Conservative ad targeting Bonnie Crombie
The Ontario Progressive Conservatives aren’t spending in a way that suggests the next provincial election is two years away.
There’s a trope in Canadian politics that we’re always six months away from a surprise snap election somewhere, but it’s usually just a misinterpretation of the tea leaves. Still, the Ford government certainly isn’t doing anything to dispel recent rumours that Ontario is going to the polls before the planned June 2026 election.
A personal brand ad being run by the FordNation page. Click through to watch.
This week, the OPC spent $22,991 (including spend by the leader’s page) on ads that pin the carbon tax on Ontario Liberal Party leader Bonnie Crombie and on personal-brand ads for Doug Ford targeted at Mississauga, Caledon, Brampton and the wider Ontario area. To put this spending in perspective, the Ontario Liberal Party has spent $1,391, and the Ontario New Democratic Party has spent $2,811 in the same period.
These trends aren’t new either, here’s how spending has looked by party over the last ninety days:
Party | Spend |
|---|---|
Ontario Progressive Conservative Party Including spend by the leader. | $259,193 |
New Democratic Party of Canada Including spend by the leader. | $19,873 |
Ontario Liberal Party Including spend by the leader. | $14,807 |
Adding fuel to the fire is that Elections Ontario is also spending, running register-to-vote ads in a few select postal codes across the GTA. Based on the postal codes they used to target their audience, Elections Ontario seems interested in increasing registration and turnout in:
Scarborough - Agincourt Richmond Hill Toronto St. Paul’s Spadina - Fort York York South - Weston Mississauga Centre Oakville North - Burlington Milton | Don Valley North Thornhill Don Valley West Davenport Etobicoke Centre Mississauga - Cooksville Hamilton Centre | Markham - Thornhill York Centre Toronto Centre Parkdale - High Park Etobicoke - Lakeshore Oakville Hamilton East - Stoney Creek |
An overview of the postal codes and ridings being targeted by Elections Ontario. Targeted postal codes are in blue, and riding boundaries are in grey.
It’s interesting that Elections Ontario is targeting predominantly NDP-Liberal swing ridings. It could be because of higher newcomer populations in these areas, but that's not true for all of them. They've also included the ridings for the NDP, Liberal and PC party leaders, which already have good voter turnout. We’ve contacted them to find out how they’re making these decisions, stay tuned!
A new conspiratorial ad being run by the Federal Conservatives in BC. Click through to watch.
This week, the Conservative Party of Canada launched a new attack ad targeted squarely at British Columbia. The ads use a text-to-speech voice and take a conspiratorial/investigative tone while suggesting that Jagmeet Singh and Justin Trudeau made a deal to secure his pension and the Prime Ministership, respectively.
Unlike all of their other ads, these only run in British Columbia. This could suggest that they are testing the message in the west before rolling it out more broadly across the country. Alternatively, it could be an attempt to assist the Conservative Party of British Columbia in the upcoming election.
New “Axe The Taxes” ads launched by the Federal Conservatives.
The New Democratic Party launched a suite of new ads at the end of this reporting period. Focused on Healthcare and labelling Danielle Smith and Doug Ford as “Pierre’s Premiers,“ they appear to be testing a few visual styles and options to see which is most resonant.
It will be interesting to see if linking Poilievre to Ford & Smith will move people in the right direction. It seems to be an attempt to decrease Poilievre’s favourability by association — although Smith’s popularity amongst Alberta voters is about the same as it was in the last election. This would be an interesting use case for pre-launch testing. You really want to make sure a contrast ad is going to work before throwing money behind it
Additional variants of the new ads by the Federal NDP.
Testing ads in this way can be helpful in determining what works and what doesn’t, but the results can be unreliable at best and completely misleading at worst. Meta is incentivized to show ads like these to people it thinks will click on them, so it’s less likely to show these ads to swing voters or persuadable people on the other side of the political spectrum. For this reason, we recommend supplementing these tests with other, more controlled and scientific options.
Because they launched on the last day of the reporting period, we didn’t see much of a jump in terms of ad spend by the NDP yet. How much they’re investing in getting this message out to the electorate will be clearer in our next edition.
Affordability Advocates are still spending a boatload, and we still don’t have a clear picture of their goals. Last week we wrote about the confusing and very well-funded campaign that this page has been running for the last few weeks, and we’re still no clearer on their plan or who’s funding the endeavour.
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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