PAID MEDIA
AGENCY IN MONTREAL.
We run English-language paid media for Montreal businesses. If your campaign needs French creative — and for consumer advertising in Quebec it usually does — we are not the right agency, and we would rather tell you that now than three months in.
What We Do and Do Not Do in Quebec
Most agency pages in this market open by claiming bilingual capability. Ours does the opposite, because it is the single most important thing a Montreal prospect needs to know about us.
We work in English only. We do not have francophone staff and we do not produce French creative. That is not a gap we paper over with translation — translated copy is recognisable to Quebec francophone audiences and performs accordingly.
Quebec's Charter of the French Language places real obligations on commercial advertising in the province, and those requirements have been strengthened in recent years. For most consumer-facing advertising to Quebec audiences, French is not a strategic preference, it is a legal requirement. If that describes your campaign, you need an agency with genuine French capability, and we will say so on the first call rather than take the booking.
Where We Are Genuinely a Good Fit
There is still a substantial amount of Montreal advertising that runs in English, and that is the work we do well.
- B2B selling into English-speaking markets. Montreal's aerospace, AI research, video-game and life-sciences firms frequently sell to buyers in the rest of Canada, the United States and Europe, in English. The company is in Montreal; the audience is not.
- Anglophone audiences in the Greater Montreal area. A large English-speaking population lives in and around the city and consumes English media.
- Technical and specialist recruitment aimed at candidates who work in English.
- National campaigns where Quebec is one part of a broader English-language buy, with French handled by you or another partner.
If your brief sits outside those, we will tell you.
A Distinct Media Landscape
Quebec has its own broadcasters, streaming habits, publications and influencer ecosystem, and francophone media consumption differs measurably from the rest of Canada. This matters even for an English-language buy: national campaigns weighted to pan-Canadian inventory often deliver into Quebec audiences who will not respond to English creative, which shows up as wasted spend rather than as an obvious failure.
Running across thirteen DSPs lets us exclude that inventory deliberately rather than absorb it by default, and report Quebec delivery separately so it is visible instead of averaged away.
Montreal's Growth Sectors
Montreal's economy has a distinctive shape — aerospace, artificial intelligence research, video games and interactive media, life sciences, and a large creative and production sector. These are industries with international buyers, technical audiences and recruitment challenges frequently as severe as their sales challenges.
They are also, usefully, industries where a great deal of the commercial conversation happens in English. We would rather show you how we would structure a campaign against your specific buyer than claim a client list in your sector — ask, and you will get a concrete plan before you have paid anything.
Working With Us From Montreal
We are Toronto-based and in the same time zone, so there is no scheduling friction and travel is straightforward when a meeting warrants it.
What you get is an agency that is explicit about its limits. Plenty of firms will take a Quebec budget and quietly run translated creative. We would rather have a shorter list of clients we can genuinely serve than a Montreal case study we had to fudge.
How We Work — Fees, Minimums and Commitment
There is no minimum spend. Most agencies publish a floor because small accounts are unprofitable to service. We would rather assess whether paid media can work for your situation and tell you honestly if it cannot, than turn away a business that is a good fit but not yet a large one.
There is no minimum contract. The average engagement runs about twelve months, but that is a pattern we have observed rather than a term we impose. Clients can work month to month and leave whenever they choose. An agency that needs a lock-in to keep your business has already told you something.
We do not charge retainers. Programmatic is priced on a CPM basis, so what you pay tracks the media we actually buy for you rather than a flat fee that stays the same whether we are busy or not.
Creative is available, and it is priced separately. We can produce assets, but it is scoped and quoted to what the account genuinely needs rather than bundled into a headline number. If you already have creative that works, you should not be paying us to remake it.
All campaign work, reporting and communication is delivered in English.
The Benchmarks We Plan Against
We would rather show you the numbers we plan against than ask you to trust ours. We publish our benchmark research openly, and it is the same data we use when building a media plan.
- Blended cost per lead across industries sits near $214 in 2026, with legal running roughly four times what e-commerce pays — see our cost per lead by industry benchmarks.
- Average return on ad spend is around 2.9:1 and has fallen about 10% year over year — the detail is in our average ROAS by industry report.
- Connected TV CPMs span $15 to $85 depending on industry and inventory quality, which we break down in our 2026 CTV CPM benchmarks.
- Display, video and audio rates are covered in our programmatic cost guide.
If a plan we put in front of you assumes performance meaningfully better than these figures, we will say why — and if we cannot justify it, the plan changes.
Frequently Asked Questions
No. We work in English only — no francophone staff, no French copywriting, and we do not offer translation as a substitute. If your campaign requires French, we are not the right fit and will tell you immediately.
For most commercial advertising directed at Quebec consumers, yes. The Charter of the French Language imposes real obligations and enforcement is active, and requirements have been strengthened in recent years. The specifics depend on your sector, your audience and the channels you use, so confirm your position with a Quebec advertising lawyer rather than relying on any agency's summary — including ours.
You can, and it tends to underperform. Quebec francophone audiences identify translated copy quickly and read it as a brand that did not consider them worth original work. Effective French campaigns are written in French by people who work in it. That is precisely why we do not offer it rather than doing it badly.
Because a meaningful amount of Montreal advertising runs in English — B2B firms selling internationally, anglophone consumer audiences, technical recruitment, and national campaigns where Quebec is one segment. That work is real and we are good at it. We would rather define the boundary clearly than compete for briefs we cannot serve properly.
Yes, and this is a common arrangement. If you have French creative from an in-house team or another partner, we can run the English campaigns alongside it in separate structures so performance is judged independently rather than averaged into a single misleading number. We will not manage the French side, but we will make sure the English side is not hiding its result.
Yes, on the same English-language basis. Quebec City, Gatineau, Sherbrooke and the regions have their own dynamics and are targeted accordingly rather than treated as a single Montreal-centred market — but the same language limitation applies everywhere in the province.