Google Ads Budget: How Much to Spend in Canada

There is no single right Google Ads budget, but there is a right way to find yours. Work backward from what a customer is worth to you, what a click costs in your market, and how many clicks it takes to land one enquiry. For many Canadian small businesses, a serious test starts somewhere between a few hundred and a few thousand dollars a month. Below that, you are mostly buying a handful of clicks and not much learning.

We run Google Ads and Facebook and Instagram Ads for businesses in London, Ontario, and across surrounding Ontario service areas. Here is how budgets actually work, what common numbers like $10 a day or $500 a month can and cannot do, and how to split money between Google and Facebook.

TL;DR

• Google Ads uses an average daily budget. Your monthly cap is that number multiplied by 30.4, so $10 a day means a ceiling of $304 a month.
• A single day can run up to twice your daily budget, but your monthly bill will not pass the cap.
• In Canada, observed small-business Google spend runs about $500 to $5,000 a month, with local search clicks commonly at $1 to $4. Your own keywords decide where you land.
• Facebook Ads can start with a very small daily budget, but small budgets teach you slowly. Decide how much you can afford to spend on learning before you launch.
• Our pricing is by custom quote after we assess fit. Contact us and we will tell you honestly whether ads make sense for you right now.

Table of Contents

• How a Google Ads budget actually works
• What drives the cost of your budget
• What do Canadian businesses actually spend?
• Is $10 a day enough? Is $500 a month enough?
• How to calculate your own budget in five steps
• Facebook Ads: what to budget and how
• How to split a budget between Google and Facebook
• Testing and adjusting without wasting money
• Our perspective
• Work with a London, Ontario team on your ad budget
• FAQ
• Sources

How a Google Ads budget actually works

Most owners picture a monthly number. Google does not. You set an average daily budget for each campaign, which is the amount you are happy to spend per day on average.

Three rules follow from that.

1. Monthly limit = daily budget × 30.4. Google uses 30.4 as the average number of days in a month. A $10 daily budget gives a monthly limit of $304, and $20 gives $608.
2. Some days run hot. Google can spend up to twice your average daily budget on a single day when traffic is strong. This is called overdelivery. Your charges for the month will not exceed the monthly limit, as Google's own help page explains.
3. You are protected from overruns. If the cost of ads served ever goes past those limits, Google covers the difference, so your billed amount stays inside the cap.

So a $20-a-day campaign might spend $34 on a Tuesday and $6 on a Sunday. Do not panic when you see a day over budget. Check the month.

Daily budget or monthly budget?

Think monthly, set daily. Decide the monthly number you are comfortable with, then divide by 30.4. For example, $1,500 a month is about $49 a day. $500 a month is about $16 a day.

If you change the budget mid-month, the maths shifts too. Keep a note of what you changed and when, so you can read results honestly later.

What drives the cost of your budget

Google is an auction. What you pay depends on your industry, your audience and the keywords you choose, according to Google's business support page. That is why a generic benchmark is a starting guess, not an answer.

In practice, these things move your cost per click the most:

• Keyword intent. "Emergency furnace repair London Ontario" is expensive because the person typing it is ready to buy. "How a furnace works" is cheap and rarely turns into work.
• Competition in your market. Legal, home services, real estate and anything high-ticket tends to draw more bidders.
• Location targeting. Targeting London alone is a different budget from targeting London plus Kitchener, Waterloo and Hamilton.
• Match types. Loose keyword settings spend money on searches you never wanted. We cover that in our guide to broad match vs phrase match.
• Ad and landing page quality. A page that matches the search converts better, which means each click is worth more.
• Your conversion rate. If one in 20 visitors enquires, your effective cost per lead is very different from a site where one in 50 does.

Cost per click is the number everything hangs on. If you want a plain definition to share with a partner or bookkeeper, this explainer on cost per click covers the basics.

What do Canadian businesses actually spend?

Honest answer: it varies, and anyone who quotes you one national number is guessing. The best Canadian data point we found is a Quebec-based digital marketing firm's write-up. It reports observed ranges of $500 to $5,000 a month in Google media spend for small and mid-sized businesses, with local consumer-facing search clicks commonly at $1 to $4. The author labels these as market observations rather than official standards. Treat them the same way.

For a Southwestern Ontario service business, that range is a reasonable frame. A single-location trade in a smaller market may sit near the bottom. A multi-city business in a competitive category will sit well above it.

For more on this, see our breakdown of how much Google Ads costs in Canada.

Media spend is not the whole bill

Your ad budget goes to Google. If someone manages the account, that is a separate cost. Never mix the two when you compare quotes. We explain the management side in what a Google Ads agency costs.

Is $10 a day enough? Is $500 a month enough?

These are the questions we hear most. Here is the math, using clicks at the $1 to $4 range above. The conversion rate is a placeholder for illustration, not a prediction.

The numbers are rounded and assume the whole budget gets spent. Real accounts waste some of it early, while Google and you learn which searches matter.

Is $10 a day enough? It can be, for a narrow test: one service, one city, a few exact or phrase keywords. It is not enough to run several services across several towns. You will get a handful of clicks a day, so you will wait weeks to learn anything.

Is $500 a month enough? For a single-service local business with a cost per click near the low end, yes, it can generate real enquiries. For a category where clicks cost $8 or more, it buys a few dozen clicks. Check your keyword prices first.

Is $20 a day good? It is a workable floor for a focused local campaign. Just do not expect it to cover a broad plan.

The real test is not whether the number sounds big. It is whether your budget is large enough to produce enough clicks and enquiries for you to make decisions. If you need about 30 clicks to land one lead and you only get 100 clicks a month, you have three or four data points. That is not a campaign you can optimize.

How to calculate your own budget in five steps

1. Know your customer value. What is a new customer worth in gross profit over the first year? A roofer with a $9,000 average job and a 30% margin has a different ceiling than a salon.
2. Set a target cost per lead. Decide the most you can pay for an enquiry and still profit after you close some of them. If you close one in four enquiries and a customer is worth $2,700 in profit, you can pay up to about $675 per enquiry before losing money, and you will want to be well under that.
3. Estimate clicks per lead. Divide 100 by your expected conversion rate. At 5%, you need about 20 clicks per enquiry. At 2%, about 50.
4. Price the clicks. Use Google's Keyword Planner to see expected cost-per-click ranges for your keywords and city. Multiply cost per click by clicks per lead to get cost per lead.
5. Back into the monthly number. Decide how many enquiries you want and multiply. Ten enquiries a month at $60 each is $600. Add a testing cushion in the first two or three months.

Worked example: a London plumber sees clicks around $4 and converts 5% of visitors. That is 20 clicks per enquiry, or $80 per enquiry. Eight enquiries a month means a budget near $640, or about $21 a day. That is an illustration of the method, not a quote or a promise of results.

If the math says you need $3,000 and you have $500, do not shrink the plan to fit. Narrow it. Fewer services, tighter geography, higher-intent keywords.

Facebook Ads: what to budget and how

Facebook and Instagram ads work differently. Google catches people who are already searching. Meta ads put your offer in front of people who were scrolling. That changes the math.

What it costs per month. There is no fixed price. Meta runs an auction too, and cost depends on your audience, your goal, the quality of your creative and the season. Small local businesses commonly start with a modest daily amount and scale once something works. Treat any "average" you read online as a rough guide only.

Daily budget. You set it per campaign or per ad set. Very low daily budgets are possible, but they give Meta little data to optimize with, so learning is slow and results are noisy. If you only have a small amount to test, run one audience and one offer instead of splitting it across five.

How much to spend. Use the same method as above: customer value, cost per lead, and volume. Social leads are often cheaper per click but less ready to buy than search leads, so judge them on closed work, not clicks.

What we watch.

• Cost per enquiry, not cost per click.
• Lead quality. Do they answer the phone? Do they book?
• Creative fatigue. Ads that perform in week one often tire by week four.
• Frequency. If the same people keep seeing the ad, refresh it.

For a side-by-side look, read our post on Google Ads vs Facebook Ads.

How to split a budget between Google and Facebook

There is no magic ratio. Here is how we think about it for local service businesses.

• You sell something people search for urgently (a burst pipe, a lawyer, a listing agent). Start with Google. Put most or all of the budget there until it is working.
• You sell something people do not know they need yet (a renovation, a new service, an event). Facebook and Instagram earn a bigger share.
• You have a small budget. Pick one channel. Splitting $600 across two platforms gives you two experiments that are each too small to read.
• You have a mid-sized budget. Put roughly the larger share on the channel with the clearer intent, and a smaller share on the other for testing. Adjust after 60 to 90 days, based on cost per qualified lead.

If you are a contractor, Local Service Ads are another Google format worth understanding before you commit your whole budget to search ads.

Testing and adjusting without wasting money

The first month is tuition. Plan for it.

1. Run it for a full cycle. Give a campaign at least four to six weeks before big decisions, unless something is clearly broken.
2. Check search terms weekly at first. Add negative keywords for searches that waste money, like "jobs", "free" or "DIY".
3. Change one thing at a time. If you change budget, keywords and landing page the same day, you will not know what worked.
4. Scale in steps. When cost per lead is healthy, raise the budget gradually and watch whether the cost holds.
5. Track real outcomes. Set up call and form tracking. If you cannot tell which clicks became customers, you are guessing.
6. Fix the page before raising spend. A slow site or a vague offer burns budget. More traffic to a site that never rings the phone just costs more.

Budget mistakes we see again and again:

• Starting too wide: every service, every city, one small budget.
• Judging after five days.
• Pausing campaigns the moment a slow week appears.
• Paying for clicks without tracking calls.
• Treating the ad budget and the management fee as the same thing.

Our perspective

We would rather tell you a budget is too small than take your money and give you a report full of clicks. A campaign needs enough volume to teach you something, and it needs a website that turns visitors into calls. If either is missing, fix that first.

We also do not think one platform fits everyone. We work with multiple industries, not only realtors: trades, professional services, retail and more. The right mix depends on how your customers buy, how competitive your market is and what a new customer is worth. So we build every plan around the business, and we do not hand out a package off a shelf.

That is why we do not publish fixed prices. Scope and pricing are set by custom quote after we assess fit. That assessment is a real conversation about your numbers, your goals and whether ads are the best next dollar for you.

— Launch & Found

Work with a London, Ontario team on your ad budget

We manage Google Ads in London, Ontario and Facebook and Instagram ads, and we serve businesses in the surrounding Ontario service areas as well. We can look at your market, your keywords and your site, then tell you what a sensible starting budget looks like.

Pricing is by custom quote after we assess fit. Contact Launch & Found for a quote, or see our services overview to find the right starting point.

FAQ

How much should I spend on Google Ads per month?

Start from your customer value and your cost per click, not from a generic number. Observed small-business spend in Canada commonly runs from about $500 to $5,000 a month, and your own market decides where you fall. Pick a figure that produces enough clicks to learn from, and commit to it for at least a few months.

What is the difference between a daily and monthly Google Ads budget?

Google only asks for an average daily budget. The monthly limit is that figure times 30.4. Some days can spend up to double the daily amount, but the monthly total will not go over the cap.

How much should I spend on Facebook Ads?

There is no fixed minimum that works for everyone. Use the same method as for Google: work out what an enquiry is worth, estimate your cost per lead and set a budget that gives you enough results to judge. Small tests are fine, but expect slow learning if the daily budget is very low.

Should I run Google Ads and Facebook Ads at the same time?

Only if your budget can support both. With a small budget, pick the channel that matches how your customers buy, usually Google for urgent needs and Facebook for demand you have to create. Add the second channel once the first one produces results you can trust.

How much does it cost to hire someone to manage ads?

Management is separate from your ad budget, and it depends on scope. Our pricing is by custom quote after we assess fit, so contact us and we will walk you through it.

Sources

• Set and change an average daily budget for your campaign, Google Ads Help
• Choose your bid and budget, Google Ads Help
• About spending limits, Google Ads Help
• Google Marketing Tools Support, Canada
• Publicité payante au Québec en 2026 : ce qu'on observe
• What is Cost Per Click (CPC)?

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