How much does CTV advertising cost in Canada?

CTV advertising in Canada is priced per thousand impressions — a CPM, in Canadian dollars. That's the simple part. The useful part is knowing what the number should roughly be for the way you're buying, what sits underneath it, and when a quote is telling you something is wrong. We buy this inventory for clients and we've sold it from the inside, at a CTV platform and an SSP — so these are the ranges and rules we actually use, framed as market observation rather than a rate card, because rates move and yours will depend on the specifics.

What does CTV advertising cost per thousand impressions?

Deal type drives price more than anything else — more than targeting, more than season, more than creative length. In the Canadian market, this is roughly where things trade:

Treat the ranges as the shape of the market, not a price list. Premium French-language inventory, sports, and tight geographic cuts all push upward; broad national prospecting pushes down. If someone quotes you open-exchange prices for "premium broadcaster inventory," one of those two claims is wrong — and it's worth finding out which, because on CTV the gap between the label and the inventory is where most buyers get hurt.

What's actually inside the quote? The fee stack

The CPM ranges above are media cost. A real campaign price adds layers, and this is where two identical-looking quotes diverge:

• DSP / platform fees — the buying platform's cut, typically a percentage of media.
• Data and targeting fees — audience segments are priced per CPM on top of media.
• Verification and measurement — fraud detection, viewability, brand safety; small per-CPM amounts that add up.
• Agency fee or margin — disclosed as a fee, or hidden inside a blended all-in CPM. This is the one to ask about.
• Reseller hops — the fee layer nobody itemizes. Every intermediary between your DSP and the app takes a percentage you'll never see on an invoice. Shorter supply paths are a price decision, not just a quality one.

Our rule, and the one we'd hand any advertiser regardless of who they buy from: make every partner separate media cost from fees before you compare quotes. An all-in $45 CPM with $38 of media inside is a different product from an all-in $45 with $24 of media inside, and you cannot tell them apart from the outside. This is the entire reason we run a transparent model — whatever we earn, you can see it — and document the supply path per campaign.

What's the minimum spend to get on TV screens?

Lower than most advertisers think — this is CTV's genuine advantage over broadcast. The practical tiers we see:

• Low thousands per month — self-serve platforms will take the money, and for a local campaign it can work. You trade away supply-path control and most of the inventory quality questions go unanswered.
• Roughly $10,000–$25,000 per flight — the range where buying through a DSP with proper PMPs, verification and an independent buyer becomes practical and efficient for regional campaigns.
• More than that — national multi-market campaigns, programmatic guaranteed commitments, and broadcaster direct deals, where delivery certainty is worth the premium.

The honest minimum isn't a platform's floor — it's the budget that buys enough frequency against your audience in your geography to register at all. A $5,000 national campaign is real money spread invisibly thin; the same $5,000 concentrated on one city can work.

Is the higher CPM worth it compared to online video?

Compared on raw CPM, CTV loses to in-feed video every time — and the comparison is wrong. A CTV impression is full-screen, unskippable, on a television, typically completing at rates online video rarely touches. Cost per completed, viewable exposure is the honest metric, and on that basis clean CTV inventory competes well against channels with cheaper CPMs and far cheaper attention.

The load-bearing word is clean. Server-side ad insertion makes CTV impressions easy to fabricate, and resold inventory arrives with its metadata stripped and its fees compounded. Paying a premium CPM for a mislabelled, five-hops-deep impression is the worst trade in digital media. It's why we buy hand-picked TV & streaming inventory on documented supply paths — the premium only makes sense when you can verify what it bought.

How to pressure-test any CTV quote

• Ask for media cost and fees, separated. Resistance is information.
• Ask which apps and services the campaign will actually run on — named, not "premium CTV."
• Ask how many intermediaries sit between the buying platform and the app, and whether the path has been verified against app-ads.txt and sellers.json.
• Ask how French-language delivery is planned and measured, if Quebec or bilingual reach matters to you.
• Ask what happens to your frequency when the same app is bought through multiple paths — if the answer is a blank look, you'll be paying to show the same person your ad in the same break.

For the full mechanics behind these questions — deal types, ad pods, SSAI, and the supply chain underneath — our guide to how CTV advertising in Canada actually works goes deep, and the planning-side companion covers which Canadian streaming services carry ads in the first place.