4 in 10 Google Advertisers Showing Ads in Canada Are Based in the US

A Toronto insurance broker bids on "home insurance quote" and finds itself in the same auction as American insurers, lenders and online services. That is normal in Canada: when a Canadian searches Google, a large share of the advertisers competing for the click are based south of the border.

For Canadian businesses, this shapes who they are up against. A US company with a national budget can bid on Canadian searches as easily as a local firm, and a Canadian advertiser that plans only against domestic competitors misreads its market. For US businesses, it shows that Canada is already a common extension of American campaigns.

40.4% of the advertisers showing Google ads in Canadian search results are verified in the US, close behind the 44.2% verified in Canada. US advertisers account for 59.8% of those advertisers' ads, six in every ten, with one US health advertiser alone reporting 20,000.

The study draws on the Google Ads Transparency Center, Google's public library of ads and advertisers, in the Canada region on September 23, 2026, for 2,000 keywords across many industries. The study covers every advertiser that appeared, 1,610 unique advertisers in all, with the country where each is verified and its approximate total number of ads, 42,785 across all advertisers.

An advertiser's country is the country where Google verified its identity, usually where the business is registered. We calculated each country's share of advertisers, where each advertiser counts once, and its share of ads, where each advertiser counts by how many ads it runs. The median is the middle advertiser: half have more ads, half have fewer.

Canadian advertisers are the largest group at 44.2%, and US advertisers are close behind at 40.4%, 650 of the 1,610. Every other country is far smaller: the UK at 2.7%, the United Arab Emirates at 1.6% and Hong Kong at 1.2%, followed by France, India and Australia at 0.9% each. Together, Canada and the US make up more than eight in ten advertisers.

Almost all of these advertisers are verified: 98.1% have confirmed their identity with Google, so the country behind each ad is known. The largest US advertisers in Canadian results include national brands such as Zillow, State Farm and Credit Karma, and the largest Canadian advertisers include Co-operators General Insurance, with 2,000 ads, and CARFAX Canada.

By number of ads, US advertisers lead: 59.8% of the ads run by advertisers in Canadian results come from US advertisers, against 37.7% from Canadian ones. Much of that total comes from one company. One US health advertiser reports 20,000 ads, nearly half of the 42,785 counted.

Ad counts measure how many ad versions an advertiser has created, and a few very large advertisers create thousands. Setting the largest one aside, Canadian advertisers run 71% of the ads and US advertisers 25%. Both views are true: American companies are four in ten of the advertisers competing for Canadian clicks, and one of them runs more ads than any other advertiser in the results.

The typical Canadian advertiser has more ads on file than the typical American one: a median of 7 ads against 2. Most US advertisers in Canadian results run only a handful of ads, while Canadian advertisers build more versions for their home market.

That difference is an opening for local businesses. A US campaign with two ads rarely speaks to Canadian searchers in their own terms, with Canadian prices, spelling, provinces and phone numbers.

Expect American competitors in your auctions. Four in ten advertisers in Canadian Google results are US-based, and some are national brands with large budgets. Check the Google Ads Transparency Center for your own keywords to see exactly who you are bidding against and how many ads they run.

Compete on local relevance. Prices in Canadian dollars, Canadian spelling, local addresses and phone numbers, and references to provinces and cities give searchers a reason to pick the local option over an American one. Write more ad variations than your US competitors, since the median US advertiser here runs only two.

A google ads agency that tracks who enters your auctions, and from where, helps a Canadian business hold its ground against larger American advertisers.

Embed this research

Cite this study