How to Buy PPC Advertising in Canada

To buy PPC (pay-per-click) advertising, you open an advertiser account directly with a platform such as Google Ads or Microsoft Advertising, add a payment method, set a daily budget and build a campaign, and the platform then charges you for the clicks, impressions, views or conversions your campaign is set to pay for. Google publishes no minimum spend on its budget pages, which say the amount “is entirely up to you”, and you can also pay an agency or freelancer to run the account for you while it stays in your name. The parts that deserve more thought than the sign-up are what you are actually billed for, how Canadian billing and tax work, and whether you can measure the enquiries the ads produce.

Where PPC is bought

PPC is sold by the advertising platforms themselves, on a self-serve basis. Google Ads covers Google Search, YouTube and the sites in Google’s display network, Microsoft Advertising covers Bing and its partners, and the social platforms such as Meta and LinkedIn sell their own ad space through their own ad managers. There is no wholesaler in between. When you buy PPC on Google, you are bidding in Google’s own auction from your own account, and Google’s cost-per-click page notes that CPC pricing “is sometimes known as pay-per-click (PPC).”

For many Calgary service businesses Google Search is the clearest first purchase, because it reaches people who are typing a need into Google at that moment. The examples in this guide use Google Ads for that reason. The same steps apply elsewhere, although each platform has its own settings, billing rules and, as the next section shows, its own idea of what you pay for.

Decide what you are paying for

“Pay-per-click” describes a billing unit, and it is not the only one on offer. Google’s advertiser guide puts it simply: “Depending on your campaign type, you can choose to pay for clicks, impressions, or conversions.” Its bid strategy guide matches each unit to a goal, recommending cost-per-click bidding for website traffic, cost per thousand viewable impressions (vCPM) for awareness on the display network, and cost-per-view or CPM bidding for video. LinkedIn’s manual bidding works the same way, charging per click, per 1,000 impressions or per view depending on the objective you pick.

A useful rule of thumb is to count the steps between the click and the money. A Calgary plumber has very few, because someone searches for a burst pipe, clicks and calls, so paying for the click makes sense and the click is close to the job. A software firm with a long sales cycle has many more, from the demo request through qualification and procurement, so a click says far less about revenue and the purchase should be judged on leads or sales instead. The unit matters because automated bidding works toward the goal you give it. If you tell Google to get as many clicks as possible, it looks for clicks, not customers.

Open the account in your business’s name

Create the Google Ads account under your business’s own Google account and keep Admin access, even if someone else will manage it. Google’s access levels page shows why: only an Admin can grant or remove access, change access levels and unlink a manager account, and Google suggests adding a second administrator so that tag management is not interrupted if one person becomes unavailable. The full walkthrough is in the steps to create a Google Ads account, but two settings need care at sign-up. Google says your currency “is permanently set when you set up your account,” so a Canadian business should choose Canadian dollars, and the time zone is also fixed once set.

Payment works a little differently in Canada. Google’s prepay help page lists Canada among the countries where prepay “isn’t available”, which means a new Canadian account runs on postpay, or on monthly invoicing if the business qualifies for it. On postpay you are charged only after costs have accrued, on the first day of each month or sooner if your costs reach your payment threshold, which varies by account, country and currency. When you add a credit or debit card, Google may place a temporary authorization on it, which it says is typically removed within a week, and once billing is processed any campaign you create can start running, so pause campaigns you are not ready to launch.

Sales tax is added on top of the ad spend. Google’s tax page says GST/HST applies to all Google Ads customers with a billing address in Canada who have not added a GST/HST registration number to their payments profile, which for an Alberta business means the 5% GST. A business registered for GST can enter its number under Billing, then Settings, in the “Canada tax info” section, and an accountant can confirm how the charges should be recorded, since Google’s tax page refers rate questions to your local tax authority.

Set a budget you can plan around

Google Ads budgets are set per campaign as an average daily amount. Google suggests dividing a monthly budget by 30.4 to get that figure, and you can change it at any time and as often as you like. The average is not a hard daily cap. For most campaigns, spend on a given day can reach twice the average daily budget to catch busy periods, while Google limits the month to no more than 30.4 times the daily average and says you never pay more than your spending limits. If you change the budget part way through the month, the cap for the rest of the month becomes the new daily budget times the calendar days remaining.

The figures above are an illustration, not a recommendation, and any management fee is separate. The right budget comes from your own numbers: what a click costs in your market, how many clicks become enquiries, and what a customer is worth. Start with a figure you could lose without harm while you collect that data, and raise it once the campaign shows what an enquiry costs.

Set up conversion tracking before the first click

Without conversion tracking, you are buying clicks with no way to tell which ones became work. Tracking records the calls, form submissions or bookings that follow a click, so the account can report a cost per enquiry rather than a cost per click, and conversion-based bid strategies have something to work toward. It is worth doing before launch rather than after, because the data from the first weeks is only useful if it was measured. The guide to set up conversion tracking in Google Ads covers website forms, calls and imports from Google Analytics 4.

Buying PPC through an agency or freelancer

You can also buy PPC through a third party who builds and manages the campaigns for you. Google’s advertiser guide notes that third-party partners “will often charge a fee in addition to the cost of your advertising” and encourages advertisers to understand the total cost, including that fee, when working out their return. The ads still run in Google’s auction, so the decision is about who does the work, not where the ads come from. Ask whether Google will bill your business directly or whether the provider pays Google and invoices you.

Google sets rules for partners who buy on a client’s behalf. Its third-party policy requires a separate Google Ads account for each advertiser a partner manages. Its transparency requirements say a partner that charges a management fee must tell new customers in writing before the first purchase and show the fee on every invoice, must report Google costs as “the exact amount charged by Google, exclusive of any fees,” and must give you the customer ID for your account when you ask, so that you can contact Google directly. A partner who resists any of that is telling you something.

Before you sign, work through the questions to ask a PPC agency, including who will run the account and what you keep if the contract ends, and compare how PPC agencies charge under flat, percentage and hourly models. With any provider, To-The-TOP! included, ask for the management fee and the ad spend as two separate numbers before you compare offers.

What not to buy

Some offers sound like PPC and are not worth paying for. Google’s advertiser guide states that “it’s not possible to guarantee a specific ad position” on Google search results, because position is set by an auction on every search, so a promise of the top spot every time misrepresents how the ads work. The same guide says advertising on Google “has no impact on your organic or natural ranking,” so buying ads to lift your SEO rankings does not work either. If a caller claims to be from Google, Google suggests asking for their name and an email from an @google.com address, since a Gmail address proves nothing.

Packages sold as a number of “PPC visits” or “targeted traffic” for a fixed price are a different product again. They are usually not bought in an auction account you own, so you may not be able to see the search terms behind the visits or check them against Google’s reporting. Ask the seller exactly where the visits come from before paying anything, and if the answer is vague, keep your budget in an account you control.

Getting help with your first PPC purchase

SEO Company To-The-TOP! is a Calgary-based practice founded in 2007, run by one Google Ads certified specialist who does all the client work, with no junior handoffs. If you would like a second opinion on a campaign plan or a quote you already have, the Google Ads management page explains the service, and you can call (403) 308-5949 to talk it through. To-The-TOP! also works on SEO for businesses in Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver and across Alberta and British Columbia, and SEO can run alongside the ads.