Online advertising statistics in Canada for 2026.

How much do advertisers spend online in Canada?

According to IAB Canada’s annual survey, the Canadian digital advertising market reached $21.1 billion in 2025. Search accounts for 43% of revenue and social media for 30%.

IAB Canada also estimates that small and medium-sized businesses account for about 31% of digital advertising revenue, and half of search revenue. This figure is modelled: IAB states that advertiser size was not reported directly. The method relies on a panel of members, econometric estimates and public financial statements, with no published sample size.

How many Quebecers shop online?

According to the NETendances survey by the Académie de la transformation numérique (Université Laval), the share of Quebec adults who made at least one online purchase reached 82% in 2025, after several years of relative stability. A third of online shoppers (34%) bought online after seeing an ad on social media.

Across Canada, Statistics Canada measures retail e-commerce sales every month: in July 2026, they reached $5.5 billion, or 7.5% of total retail trade. This measure excludes travel, tickets and financial transactions.

Which social networks do Quebecers use?

The 2026 edition of NETendances, published on September 30, 2026, shows that 93% of Quebec internet users aged 18 and over use social media. Those who use it spend an average of 2 hours and 21 minutes a day on it.

Facebook, Instagram and TikTok are used every day by 72% to 80% of their own users. The survey is based on a weighted online panel, with no published margin of error: differences of a few points from one year to the next should be read with caution.

Which search engines, and which devices?

According to StatCounter, Google accounted for 85.28% of visits coming from a search engine in Canada in September 2026, ahead of Bing (10.08%). Mobile represented 46.21% of page views that month; over the last twelve months, that share ranged between 41.4% and 47.1%. The takeaway: about half of visits happen on a phone.

StatCounter measures page views on more than a million websites that use its tool, not people or searches. These figures give a reliable order of magnitude, not a head count.

Artificial intelligence, a new point of contact

In October 2025, 52% of Quebec internet users had already used a generative artificial intelligence tool, up from 33% a year earlier, according to NETendances. Of those, 84% used ChatGPT.

• OpenAI says more than 1.2 billion people use ChatGPT every week worldwide (October 7, 2026). No figure specific to Canada has been published.
• Ads in ChatGPT started appearing in Canada on April 16, 2026, on the Free and Go (paid) plans. Plus and higher plans don’t have them.
• Google made its AI Mode available in French on October 14, 2025.

For what advertising on ChatGPT can do for a Canadian small business today, see our guide to ChatGPT ads.

Do small businesses advertise online?

Less than you might think. According to Statistics Canada’s survey of digital technology, 19.6% of small Canadian businesses (5 to 19 employees) paid for online advertising in 2023, and 74.7% had their own website. Among micro-businesses (1 to 4 employees), those shares fell to 9.9% and 45.0%.

In Quebec, the Institut de la statistique du Québec measures something else, on a different population: in 2023, 55.6% of businesses with at least one employee had their own website, and 39.3% used social media to place ads. The two surveys therefore can’t be compared directly.

These surveys date from 2023: Statistics Canada’s next data collection begins in October 2026. Even so, they show a clear gap between the place digital advertising holds in market spending and the share of small businesses that use it. For a small business, that is often an opportunity: in several local industries, we see few competitors advertising well. Check this in your own industry and territory before drawing conclusions. To choose between channels, see our guide Google Ads or Meta Ads.

How we choose these figures

• Every figure comes from the organization that produced the data, never from a blog that summarizes it.
• We state the date, the population covered and the method whenever the source publishes them.
• A figure whose context isn’t clear in the source is not published.
• This page is reviewed every six months, and sooner if a major source publishes a new edition.

These statistics describe the market; they don’t tell you what a campaign will cost you. For a concrete budget, see our guide on the cost of Google Ads, or let’s talk about your advertising campaigns.