Spend Where The Auction Can Reach
A large part of Ottawa buys through procurement, not through search. Paid media in Ottawa starts with deciding which revenue an auction can actually touch.
The split nobody budgets for
More than 120,000 federal employees work in Ottawa, and roughly 40% of Ottawa tech demand traces back to federal departments and crown corporations.
Invest Ottawa, December 2025
TECHNATION Labour Market Outlook, 2024
Invest Ottawa, 2025
Federal departments in Ottawa do not find suppliers by clicking an ad. They buy through standing offers, supply arrangements and solicitations posted on CanadaBuys, and the decision runs on whether you hold the right vehicle and the right security clearance. You can spend a great deal of money bidding on phrases that look commercial and reach nobody in Ottawa who is permitted to buy from you that way. Telling you that is the first job of a ppc agency ottawa businesses can trust.
So the first piece of Ottawa work is arithmetic, not campaign structure. What share of revenue comes through procurement, what share comes through private companies and consumers, and what share comes through partners and subcontracting. Only the middle share is biddable. Any ppc company ottawa businesses hire that does not ask the question is about to optimise a number that was never the point, and it is the question that separates a ppc agency ottawa firms keep from one that simply runs the account it was handed.
This is not an argument against paid media in Ottawa. It is an argument for sizing it honestly. An Ottawa firm whose revenue is 70% federal has a small biddable market and should spend accordingly. An Ottawa firm selling to the 540 companies in Kanata North, or to consumers across eastern Ontario, has a large one and is probably underspending.
The empty half
Most advertisers in Ottawa run English keywords only. The French side of the same Ottawa auction is frequently cheaper for the same intent.
Running French properly in Ottawa means more than switching the keyword list. The ad copy has to be written rather than translated, the landing page has to exist in French, and the phone has to be answered by somebody who can continue the conversation. Sending a French searcher to an English page buys a click and loses the lead, which is worse than not bidding at all.
Where that chain holds, it is usually the cheapest volume available to a ppc advertising agency ottawa clients are working with, and the clearest advantage an Ottawa advertiser has over a national competitor bidding into the city. Where it does not hold, we say so and leave it alone rather than spending on Ottawa traffic the business cannot serve.
Where the budget goes
A single English campaign carrying every service, a bid strategy optimising to form fills that include students and job seekers, and no negative list for the words that mean government, tender or career. In a city as heavily employed by one buyer as Ottawa, those three together consume most of a budget quietly.
Separate campaigns by what the money actually does, conversions defined as qualified enquiries rather than any form submission, and a negative list built from a first month of real Ottawa search terms rather than from a template. Then French, once the English side is honest.
What gets measured
The most common problem we find in an Ottawa account somebody has inherited is not the bidding. It is what the account was told to count.
Before a bid strategy is chosen, agree what counts. A qualified enquiry with a budget and a timeline, not every form submission. This single decision moves more money than any keyword change a ppc ottawa account is likely to make.
Which Ottawa clicks became real opportunities, sent back into the ads account so bidding learns from closed business rather than from form fills. Without it the account is guessing from the first page of the funnel.
Cost per qualified Ottawa enquiry, cost per opportunity, and what share of pipeline the channel produced. Impressions and click-through rate explain performance; they do not justify a budget.
How it goes
Five stages, with something decided at the end of each.
Before anything
Split revenue into procurement, private sector and partner channels. In Ottawa paid media gets sized against the middle one only. This takes an afternoon and it decides whether the budget is twice what it should be or half.
Week one
Thirty days of actual queries, sorted into buyers, job seekers, students and procurement research. The negative list comes out of that Ottawa report rather than from a template, which is why it works here and a generic one does not.
Week one
Qualified enquiries only, wired through to the CRM so the feedback is from closed business. Everything else is tracked for information and kept out of the bid strategy.
Weeks two to four
Campaigns split by what the money does, Ottawa landing pages that match the promise, and brand defence running so a competitor is not collecting people who searched for you. No French yet.
Month two onward
Written ad copy, a French landing page, and somebody who can answer in French. If any link is missing we do not open the Ottawa campaign, because a click we cannot serve costs the same as one we can.
Questions
Not in the way the question usually means. Ottawa departments buy through standing offers, supply arrangements and posted solicitations, and the people running those processes are not making a purchase decision from an ad. What ads can do is make sure that when somebody on an evaluation team looks you up by name, or searches the specific capability you provide, you are visible and look credible. That is a real job and worth funding. It is just not lead generation, and budgeting it as though it were is how paid media got its reputation in Ottawa.
In Ottawa it is worth it when you can serve a French enquiry end to end: ad copy written rather than machine translated, a landing page in French, and somebody who can continue the conversation by phone or email. Where that holds, the French side of the Ottawa auction is usually less contested for the same commercial intent, so the cost per click is lower. Where it does not hold, the campaign buys clicks and loses the leads, which is the worst outcome available. We would rather run English well than run both badly.
The honest answer depends on the biddable share rather than on the size of the business. A firm doing most of its revenue through procurement has a small addressable auction and should spend modestly on visibility and brand defence. An Ottawa firm selling to private companies or consumers across the region can usually justify several times that, because the Ottawa auction actually contains its buyers. We work the split out before quoting a budget, which is why we ask for the revenue breakdown first.
Because Ottawa is a city of very large employers, careers intent sits close to service intent in the same phrases, and most accounts count every form submission as a conversion. Smart bidding then does exactly what it was told and goes looking for more of them. The fix is a negative list built from your own search terms report plus a conversion definition that excludes anything arriving through the careers path. It is usually the single largest piece of recoverable waste we find.
Often. Where an Ottawa business has somebody in-house running the day to day well, the parts that most commonly need outside help are the conversion definition, the CRM feedback loop and the quarterly read on whether the biddable share has changed. Those are the pieces that decide whether the account is pointed at the right market, and they are easy to leave alone for years. We are happy to take only those.
Next step
Send us your last three months of spend and a rough split of where revenue comes from. We will come back with what the auction can reach, what it cannot, and what we would stop.
NewLife Marketing · 70 Bearberry Rd, Minesing, ON L9X 2E1 · 705-302-1097 · Serving Ottawa and the surrounding area.
Where to go next
