Most "Facebook ads cost" articles are written in US dollars for US businesses. If you're a Canadian business owner, those numbers are close to useless.
The short answer: For a Canadian service business, advertising on Facebook realistically costs $1,500 to $3,000 CAD per month in ad spend, or about $50 to $100 a day, plus GST/HST that Meta adds on top. $1,500 a month is the minimum I'd recommend. Below that, you're paying Meta to experiment instead of paying for leads.
Below: what a real Winnipeg campaign cost month by month in 2026, and how to tell if your ads are working before you pull the plug.
Plan on $1,500 CAD a month to start, and up to about $3,000 a month for the average service business.
That's the range we work in at Adovate. We run campaigns from Winnipeg for service businesses across Canada and the US, and every client starts at $50 a day, which works out to about $1,500 a month. From there we scale based on results. Most businesses settle somewhere between $1,500 and $3,000 a month.
Why $1,500 as the floor? Meta's algorithm learns from results. At $10 or $20 a day, a service business gets a handful of leads a week, and that's not enough data for Meta to figure out who your buyers are. I went deep on this in what the minimum daily budget for Meta ads really is in 2026, and if you're tempted to go lower, read Is $10 a Day Good for Facebook Ads? first.
Your real monthly cost is ad spend, plus sales tax, plus management and creative if you hire help.
A Winnipeg roofing company we manage spent about $50 a day and averaged $29.43 per lead over seven months.
Here are the real numbers from their monthly reports. The campaign launched in early March 2026 with a simple lead form (name, email, phone) and a free roofing quote offer.
In total, that's $9,828.30 in ad spend, 334 leads, and an average cost per lead of $29.43 CAD.
Look at April. The first full month had the highest cost per lead, at $52.14. If you judged Facebook ads on that month alone, you'd have quit. Instead, the budget stayed the same, and the next month cost per lead dropped by about half while lead volume nearly doubled. August was the best month, with 65 leads at $23.14 each.
September went up about 30%, which is normal for roofing in Manitoba as the season winds down. That's seasonality, not a broken campaign.
For that Winnipeg campaign, CPM ran from about $15 to $26 CAD, and cost per click averaged about $1.01.
CPM is what you pay to show your ad 1,000 times. CPC is what you pay for each click. Across the seven months above:
Here's the thing most people miss. The cheapest CPM months weren't automatically the best lead months. CPM climbed through the summer, but cost per lead held between $23 and $28, because the ads and the offer were doing their job. Watch cost per lead, not cost per impression. For how CPL compares across industries, see our cost per lead benchmarks for service businesses.
One honest caveat: this is one roofing account in one market. Your CPM depends on your industry, your audience, your creative, and the time of year. Treat these as a real-world reference point, not a guarantee.
Clinics and home service businesses get the most out of $1,500 to $3,000 a month. Professional services usually need more.
If you serve customers in more than one province, how you set up targeting matters too. Our guide to targeting Canadian audiences with Facebook ads covers that.
Give it at least two to three months at a consistent budget before you judge results.
The biggest mistake I see Canadian business owners make isn't the budget. It's giving up too fast. They expect results in the first couple of weeks, and if the first month looks rough, they decide ads aren't for them.
The roofing campaign above shows why that's a mistake. Month one looked expensive. Month two was half the cost per lead.
Our approach is simple: $50 a day, $1,500 a month, every month, then scale from there. We don't play around with the budget. Make good ads, run a simple campaign, and let the data build. Most people overthink it.
Judge lead quality by the conversations you actually have, not by the leads you couldn't reach.
A lot of owners decide their Facebook leads are "bad" because nobody picks up the phone. That's usually a sales and follow-up issue, not an ads issue, and it's fixable. Call fast, call more than once, and follow up by text and email. Automating your follow-up helps a lot here. Here's how we automate lead follow-up with GoHighLevel.
If you're having real conversations and those people aren't a fit, then look at the ads, the offer and the form. Until then, don't blame the ads for a follow-up problem.
Work backward from what a customer is worth to the most you can afford to pay per lead.
I laid out the full formula, with lifetime value, margin, close rate and booking rate, in our Meta ads minimum budget breakdown. The short version: figure out your maximum cost per lead, then check whether $1,500 to $3,000 a month gets you enough leads at that price. For a broader look at pricing, see How Much Do Meta Ads Cost in 2026?
If you'd rather have someone run the numbers and the campaign for you, that's what our Facebook ads management for service businesses is built for.
For a Canadian service business, plan on $1,500 to $3,000 CAD a month in ad spend, or about $50 to $100 a day. Meta adds GST/HST on top, and agency management and creative are extra if you hire help. $1,500 a month is the minimum we recommend for lead generation.
Meta lets you spend as little as a few dollars a day, but lead campaigns for service businesses need about $1,500 CAD a month to give Meta enough data to optimize. Most of the service businesses we work with end up between $1,500 and $3,000 a month.
It depends on the industry. A Winnipeg roofing company we manage averaged $29.43 CAD per lead over seven months in 2026, with its best month at $23.14. Professional services usually see a higher cost per lead because they need higher-quality leads.
Yes. Meta adds sales tax on top of your ad spend for Canadian ad accounts. In Manitoba that's 5% GST, so budget roughly 5% above your ad spend, and more in HST provinces. Your billing summary in Meta Ads Manager shows the exact tax charged.
On a Winnipeg roofing account we ran from March to September 2026, CPM averaged $19.28 CAD and ranged from about $15 to $26. CPM varies by industry, audience, creative and season, so use cost per lead as your main measure of success.
Give a campaign at least two to three months at a steady budget. In our roofing example, the first full month had the highest cost per lead, at $52.14, and it dropped to $26.58 the next month at the same budget.
We'll look at your numbers, your market and your goals, and tell you honestly what it'll take to get consistent leads, in CAD with no surprises. Book a free strategy call with Adovate.
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