Best Marketing Agencies in Toronto (2026)

Introduction

Toronto has Canada's widest choice of marketing agencies, and the 13 below cover the main ways a brand can buy growth: search and paid media, analytics, media planning, health marketing, earned-first PR and experiential. They were chosen for recent work, 2025 and 2026 recognition, and the depth of their client rosters.

The market shifted over the past year. Omnicom completed its acquisition of IPG at the end of 2025, which brought IPG's Canadian media agencies such as Media Experts under Omnicom Media. At Strategy's 2025 Agency of the Year awards, Starcom took Media Agency of the Year, and Toronto PR firms Agnostic and Citizen Relations placed second and third in the PR category. Search specialists spent much of 2026 adapting their offer to AI search tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity.

Every agency here has an active office in Toronto or the wider GTA in 2026. The list is in no order of merit. Pure creative shops are covered on a separate page, so this one leans towards performance, data, PR-led and specialist marketing firms.

The best marketing agencies in Toronto

1. Klick Health

Independent · Toronto · klick.com

Klick Health describes itself as the world's largest independent health agency. Leerom Segal, Aaron Goldstein and Peter Cordy founded it in 1997, and it is headquartered in Toronto with offices in New York, Philadelphia, London, São Paulo and Singapore. At Cannes Lions 2026 it was named Healthcare Agency of the Year and Healthcare Network of the Year, after winning Clio Health Independent Agency of the Year in 2023 and 2024.

The agency works on commercialisation for pharmaceutical and biotech companies and has around 250 medical experts with postgraduate degrees on staff. Recent work includes "Infinite Saree" for India's Red Dot Foundation, which took a Silver Lion in 2026. Its focus is life sciences, so it suits pharma, biotech and health brands more than general consumer briefs.

2. Starcom Canada

Publicis Groupe · Toronto · starcomww.com

Starcom Canada won Gold as Strategy's Media Agency of the Year in 2025. Véronik L'Heureux has led the agency since January 2025, and it grew to 415 people across Toronto, Montreal and Windsor that year, adding 113 staff. It runs on Publicis ID, an identity graph built for the Canadian market, together with the Growth OS data platform.

Clients include Coca-Cola, AB InBev, Keurig Dr Pepper, LEGO, Cadillac Fairview and Ubisoft, and Mars was among its recent new business wins. Its "Visible Billboards" for TD, designed for people with colour vision deficiency, was named Strategy's Media Campaign of the Year in 2025.

3. Cardinal Path

Merkle (dentsu) · Financial District · cardinalpath.com

Cardinal Path is a marketing analytics consultancy, now part of Merkle within dentsu. Its Toronto office at 1 University Avenue is one of five in North America, alongside New York, Chicago, Vancouver and Saint John.

The firm handles analytics strategy, tag and platform implementation, dashboards and measurement, and reports more than 3,000 implementations across 15 countries. It suits brands that want their tracking and reporting sorted before adding media spend. Recent research from the firm covers measuring AI-driven traffic and privacy signals.

4. Search Engine People

Independent · Bloor-Yonge · searchenginepeople.com

Search Engine People is one of Canada's longest-running search agencies. Jeff Quipp started it as a one-person SEO practice in the late 1990s, and it appeared on Profit's list of fastest-growing companies five years in a row. The Toronto office sits at 2 Bloor Street East, with staff in Pickering, Vancouver and Raleigh.

Services cover SEO, paid search, programmatic, social, content, analytics and conversion optimisation, and the agency now offers optimisation for AI search engines. Past clients include Bell, Rogers, Scotiabank, RE/MAX and Subaru.

5. Major Tom

Independent · Toronto · majortom.com

Major Tom is an independent digital marketing agency of about 65 people with offices in Vancouver, Toronto, New York and San Francisco. Founding partner Chris Breikss and CEO John Blown have run it for roughly 25 years, and it lists 71 awards for client work.

The agency combines paid media, SEO and GEO with web development and brand work. Clients include MEC, COBS Bread, OUAI, IPEX and The Little Potato Company, which makes it a good fit for consumer and B2B brands that want strategy and execution from one team.

6. Ignite Digital

Independent · Mississauga · ignitedigital.com

Ignite Digital was founded in 2008 and works from an office in Mississauga, serving Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver and US clients. It reports more than 500 businesses served and ratings of 4.8 or higher on Google, Clutch and G2.

The agency focuses on SEO (technical, local, enterprise and ecommerce), paid ads on Google, Meta, LinkedIn and Bing, and WordPress and Shopify builds. It is aimed at small and mid-sized businesses, and it offers a free competitor analysis before any engagement.

7. Strategic Objectives

Independent, women-owned · St. Lawrence · strategicobjectives.com

Strategic Objectives was founded in 1983 by sisters Deborah Weinstein and Judy Lewis, who remain partners, and is certified by Women Business Enterprises Canada. IABC/Toronto named it Toronto Agency of the Year in 2025, and the firm counts more than 300 national and international awards.

Its work spans launches, media relations, events, influencer marketing and social purpose campaigns, including A&W's Burgers to Beat MS and the PWHL's "Stick in the Ground". Current clients include Kia Canada, Weber, Benjamin Moore, Maple Leaf Foods and Diageo Canada.

8. Agnostic

Independent · Bloor-Yonge · thinkagnostic.com

Agnostic is an independent communications agency that Sarah Crabbe started as a one-person consultancy in 2019. It now has 28 people in Toronto and Halifax and won Silver in Strategy's 2025 PR Agency of the Year category. It also launched Agnostic Exchange, which joins PR with experiential work.

The agency works across PR, social, experiential and paid media. Clients include Metro, Celsius, Kicking Horse Coffee, Coinbase and the Terry Fox Foundation, for which it ran "Finish It", and it has been named Wendy's Canada's agency of record.

9. Citizen Relations

Plus Company · Toronto · citizenrelations.com

Citizen Relations is an earned-first integrated agency with 174 people in ten offices, from Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver to New York, Los Angeles, London and Berlin. It is part of Plus Company and is led by CEO Nick Cowling. It placed third in Strategy's 2025 PR Agency of the Year category after taking Silver in 2024.

Recent work includes 150 balloon installations across six continents for SickKids' 150th anniversary, TurboTax's horror short "Undone" for Gen Z, and "Fix Tixflation" for Coors Light. Nespresso Canada and RBC Dominion Securities joined as clients in 2025.

10. Veritas Communications

Stagwell · Toronto · veritasinc.com

Veritas was founded in Montreal in 1993 and is now based in Toronto as part of Stagwell, which merged Montreal's Luxine PR into it in 2024. Its "King of Zero" work for Budweiser was Strategy's PR Campaign of the Year in 2025. Nina Szirmay-Kalos became president in April 2026, working with CEO Krista Webster.

The agency handles consumer and corporate PR across traditional, social and digital channels, and its sister agency Meat & Produce covers influencer, content and experiential work. Clients have included Nissan Canada (communications agency of record since 2024), Subway Canada and DoorDash Canada.

11. Edelman Toronto

Independent, family-owned · Yorkville · edelman.com/ca

Edelman is a global communications firm owned by Daniel J. Edelman Holdings, the Edelman family's private holding company. The Toronto office at 150 Bloor Street West is one of five in Canada, alongside Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary and Ottawa, and is led by general manager Scott Evans.

Edelman covers brand marketing, corporate reputation and crisis work. It publishes the annual Edelman Trust Barometer, whose 2026 edition focused on "Trust Amid Insularity", and in April 2026 it launched a Quebec edition of its Power of 55 creator list.

12. North Strategic

Publicis Groupe · Downtown Toronto · northstrategic.com

North Strategic is a communications and earned media agency with offices in Toronto, Montreal and Calgary, run as a boutique within Publicis Groupe. The Toronto team works from 111 Queen Street East.

Services include earned media, thought leadership, crisis and reputation work, influencer marketing, content and live events. Clients include American Express, Canada Goose, Google Cloud, Heineken, Sobeys and Sleep Country.

13. Mosaic

Acosta Group · Liberty Village · mosaic.com

Mosaic has worked in experiential marketing for more than 35 years and keeps its Canadian base at 1179 King Street West, with a US hub in Dallas. It is part of Acosta Group. In March 2026 it repositioned itself as a brand experience agency with a new visual identity, built around experiential, B2B corporate events, integrated commerce and field sales.

Clients include Google, Microsoft, Samsung and Tim Hortons. In January 2026 it ran a playoff activation for the Buffalo Bills that combined live events with out-of-home, social and influencer work.

What to look for in a Toronto marketing agency

Decide first which part of the funnel needs the most help. Search and paid media specialists such as Search Engine People and Ignite Digital work best when demand already exists and needs capturing. Earned-first agencies such as Agnostic or Citizen Relations create attention. Media agencies and analytics firms decide where the money goes and how results are counted. Many Toronto brands end up with two or three of these working side by side.

Ask how results will be measured, and who owns the data. Canadian privacy rules and the loss of third-party cookies have made first-party data and clean tracking more important, and the agency's numbers should match what your own analytics show. If the setup is shaky, an analytics partner can be worth hiring before any new media spend.

Check the bilingual and national reach you need. Several firms here run Montreal offices or French-language teams, which matters for national campaigns, while others focus on Ontario or on US expansion. It is reasonable to ask who will run the Quebec side of the work and whether the agency uses partners for it.

Finally, look at how reporting and approvals run week to week. Marketing programmes produce a steady flow of ad variants, landing pages, media plans and monthly reports, and they lose time when that material is spread across inboxes and shared drives. Agencies that keep the latest assets, decisions and reports in one place for the client are easier to work with over a long retainer.

How Fabric helps marketing agency teams

Fabric gives a marketing agency one workspace for its files, client feedback and account knowledge, with AI search across all of it. The agency setup is built around one space per client, with briefs, media plans, creative and call notes kept together. There are specific guides for performance marketing and SEO teams.

Search works by meaning across documents, images, PDFs and transcribed recordings, and it reaches into connected apps such as Google Drive, Dropbox, Notion and Gmail. A strategist can find last quarter's report or a client's comment on a landing page without knowing which tool it was saved in. Ad creative and video sit in Fabric's cloud drive, which streams files on demand and takes no local disk space.

For client reporting, any file or folder can be published as a web page and updated by editing the source, so a monthly report link stays the same. Link analytics shows when each named recipient opened it and how long they spent with it. Clients can leave threaded comments through a shared link without creating an account. Content pipelines can run on kanban boards whose cards are the files themselves.

On Team plans, self-writing docs maintain a page for each client from meetings, Slack and the workspace, covering decisions, deliverables and open items. Account managers who join mid-retainer can see why budgets moved without asking around.

Link analytics and password protection are included on Pro and Team plans, and self-writing docs on Team plans, which start at $125 a month. See plans for teams.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best marketing agency in Toronto?

It depends on the job. On 2025 and 2026 recognition, Starcom won Strategy's Media Agency of the Year, Agnostic and Citizen Relations placed in the PR category, and Klick Health was named Healthcare Agency of the Year at Cannes Lions 2026.

How is a marketing agency different from a creative agency?

A marketing agency usually owns growth targets: search, paid media, analytics, PR or events, measured against leads, sales or reach. A creative agency develops the brand idea and campaigns. Many brands hire both, and our list of creative agencies in Toronto covers the second group.

Which Toronto agencies specialise in SEO and paid search?

Search Engine People, Major Tom and Ignite Digital all offer SEO and paid search, and each now includes optimisation for AI search tools. Search Engine People and Major Tom also serve larger national brands, while Ignite Digital focuses on small and mid-sized businesses.

Are there independent marketing agencies in Toronto?

Yes. Klick Health, Search Engine People, Major Tom, Ignite Digital, Strategic Objectives and Agnostic are independently owned, and Edelman is owned by the Edelman family's holding company.

How much does a marketing agency in Toronto cost?

Fees vary with scope. Specialist SEO and paid media agencies often work on monthly retainers plus media spend, PR firms on retainers or project fees, and media agencies on a fee or a percentage of spend. Ask for a scope of work that names the deliverables and the people working on the account.

Related lists

Marketing agencies in other cities: New York · London · Los Angeles · Chicago · San Francisco

More in Toronto: Creative agencies · Advertising agencies · Social media agencies · Branding agencies · UX design agencies · Content studios

Run your agency on Fabric: Fabric for marketing teams · Fabric for agencies · Best client portal tools