After two more tepid weeks, the top radio buyers in Toronto went back to big buys for the week ending Oct. 25.

The Media Monitors report for that week shows the Toyota Dealer Association maintained its lead and kept its spend consistent with 1,838 total ads. The top-five radio spenders in the market all had above 1,000 ads (which had not happened for the past two weeks); Toyota was followed by GoodFood, BMO, Hyundai and OLG.

Despite some softness in the auto dealer association category (which still topped all categories with 4,700 total buys), every other category in the top-10 saw growth. Finance lifted by 42% (3,401 ads), while Asian factory autos nearly doubled (2,883). Governments and unions stayed almost unchanged (a minimal lift to 2,466), while QSRs more-than-doubled (2,047). Other lifts were seen from food and beverage retailers, business and consumer services, lotteries, local auto dealers and television and cable TV.

In Montreal, however, after several weeks of lifts, the market didn’t see as much action as Toronto. The provincial government remained the top advertiser, but reduced its buy just over 100 ads, to 799. Nissan, Mazda, CTV and Hydro-Québec followed, all with between 300 and 400 ads each – which has become fairly typical for the Montreal top-five.

Despite the Provincial Government’s slight pullback, other advertisers in the government and unions category pushed it up slightly; it topped the week with 1,450 ads. Asian factory autos also grew by more than 30%, up to 1,278 ads.

Growth in Montreal was also seen in the finance category, auto dealer associations, business and consumer services, QSRs (which doubled) and retail stores (which also doubled). Small to moderate drops were seen in television and cable TV, public service and local auto dealers.

Recent data from SMI shows that across all of Canada, auto – including both OEMs and dealers – was the category that saw the biggest drop in ad spending during Q3 (July to September). Media Monitors data for both Toronto and Montreal supports this from a radio perspective; in summer 2019, auto-related categories made up 33.3% of the top-spending categories in Toronto in June (it dropped to 21.8% in June 2020) and 40.3% of the top radio advertisers in Toronto in August (it dropped to 33.2% in August 2020).