Investor marketing for listed companies: what it costs, how it works and the disclosure rules

Investor marketing is paid media that puts a listed company’s published news in front of investors who have not heard of it yet: search ads, social and video, newsletters and sponsored articles, all leading back to the company’s own website. In the 91 agreements we traced that TSXV and CSE companies announced from 2024 to 2026, the median one-off budget was about 150,000, in the currency each company stated. The disclosure rules are clear in every main market. What is rarely clear is how much of the money reaches an investor.

What listed companies disclose paying

On the TSX Venture Exchange, a company that hires someone for investor relations or promotional activity has to announce it in a news release that names the provider, the services, the period and the cost. The Canadian Securities Exchange asks for much the same. That makes the Canadian venture market the one place where the price of investor marketing is public.

We read 91 of those announcements, from 60 companies and about 45 providers: 55 by companies on the CSE and 36 on the TSXV. 48 came from mining companies and 43 from energy companies. Uranium alone accounted for 27.

• 01The median one-off budget was about 150,000. Across the 78 announcements that gave a single budget, the middle half ran from 100,000 to 250,000 and the full range from 21,825 to 1,620,357. The figures are in the currency each company stated (43 in US dollars, 23 in Canadian dollars, 11 in euros, the rest unstated or mixed). We have not converted them, so read the median as a guide, not a price.
• 02Most budgets have six figures. 61 of the 78 were 100,000 or more, 24 were 250,000 or more and 9 were 500,000 or more.
• 03Monthly retainers vary widely. Twelve announcements quoted a monthly fee, from about US$6,000 a month at the low end to US$200,000 to US$250,000 a month at the top.
• 04An outside count agrees. A newsletter that analysed 260 awareness engagements disclosed in SEC, TSXV and CSE filings from January to July 2026 put the median budget at $125,000, with a middle half of $45,000 to $250,000, Canadian and US dollars pooled.

A selection from our count: providers with more than one announcement, or with fees and media shown apart. Amounts as each company announced them, before tax.

Terms are short and often paid up front. Most run from 30 days to six months. 18 announcements mention payment up front, on signing or in advance, 13 run until the budget is spent, and five pay partly in stock options or shares.

What the money buys

The announcements describe the work in broad terms. Across the 91, social media is mentioned 26 times, search 25, email 20 and video 13. Native advertising, newsletters and influencers come up 12 times each, and display advertising 8. About a dozen name German-speaking or other European audiences.

Published benchmarks give the scale of each channel.

• 01Search. An investor who types a commodity, a country or a company name is already looking. Across all industries a Google search click cost US$5.42 on average in LocaliQ’s 2026 benchmarks. Retail investor terms can cost less: in the United States “gold stocks” is searched about 55,500 times a month, at about US$3 a click.
• 02Social. Meta reaches retail investors cheaply: Dreamdata measured a B2B cost of €9.18 per thousand impressions in 2026. LinkedIn reaches fund managers, analysts and executives at a higher price, about US$63 per thousand impressions in Metadata.io’s 2025 benchmarks.
• 03Video. YouTube in-stream views cost about US$0.05 each, at US$5 to US$10 per thousand impressions for most advertisers. Interviews with the chief executive, cut for YouTube, are a common way investor media deliver a client.
• 04Newsletters and sponsored articles. Placements on investor news sites and in their email lists. They are sold as packages, so the cost per reader is rarely shown.

Why the media is often a small share

Most announcements quote one number. They do not split the provider’s fee from the media it buys, so neither the company nor its shareholders can see how much of the budget reached an ad platform. Two in our count did split it. One €500,000 budget was announced as inclusive of advertising spend and an 18 per cent agency fee. Another engagement was priced at C$7,000 a month in fees plus an estimated C$5,000 a month in advertising, so less than half of the monthly cost was media.

What follows is our estimate, not a measured figure. At the €9.18 per thousand impressions Dreamdata measured on Meta, €10,000 of media buys about 1.1 million impressions. If each person sees an ad two to four times, that is roughly 270,000 to 540,000 people. So reach in the hundreds of thousands does not, on its own, need a six-figure budget. Production, placements and fees can be worth paying for. The point is that a company should be able to see the split, and if a proposal cannot say how much of it is media, ask.

How we price investor marketing

We publish the model rather than a price list. Management is typically 15 to 20 per cent of ad spend, plus a monthly retainer for creative, compliance and reporting. Ad budgets are paid at cost, into ad accounts in your company’s name, so you see every dollar of media and keep the accounts and the audience when the campaign ends.

The service is set out on our investor marketing page, with a calculator that estimates reach, website visits and investor sign-ups for a budget. It estimates an audience. It never estimates a share price, a trading volume or a number of shareholders.

The disclosure rules

Investor marketing is regulated as the promotion of a security, and the rules follow the investor, not the agency. These are the main ones for a company listed in Canada whose shares may also trade in the United States or Europe.

• 01TSX Venture Exchange. Policy 3.4 treats an arrangement for investor relations or promotional activity as material. A news release names the provider, the services, the period and the cost, and pay tied to the share price or to trading volume is not allowed.
• 02Canadian Securities Exchange. Policy 7 asks for a news release that names the provider, the dates, the platforms and the compensation, whether or not the provider is paid.
• 03British Columbia. Section 52(2) of the Securities Act requires every record disseminated as part of investor relations activities to disclose, clearly and conspicuously, that it is issued by or on behalf of the issuer.
• 04United States. Section 17(b) of the Securities Act of 1933 makes it unlawful to publish anything describing a security for payment from the issuer without disclosing the payment and its amount. OTC Markets also flags securities that are being promoted, and can ask the company for a statement on the promoters, the payments and any insider selling.
• 05United Kingdom. Under section 21 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000, a financial promotion has to be made or approved by an authorised person unless an exemption applies. The FCA reads Article 69 of the Financial Promotion Order as covering listed and AIM companies talking about their own admitted securities. It is not available to a third party speaking for them.

Two more rules shape the words. National Instrument 43-101 requires scientific and technical statements about a material mineral project to be based on information prepared or approved by a qualified person, and its definition of written disclosure includes websites. And in 2018 the Canadian Securities Administrators named unbalanced claims and undisclosed paid promotion as problems they look for.

This is a summary as we read the rules on 12 November 2026. Check the exchange’s current rules and your advisers. We do not give legal or securities advice.

What good looks like

Independent research is unkind to the hype model. A study by the staff of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, covering 1.8 million trades, found that investors in promoted OTC stocks had a median holding-period return 3.81 percentage points worse than investors in stocks that were not promoted. Research on small companies that hire investor relations firms points the other way: press coverage and trading rise first, then institutional ownership and analyst following. Attention that is honest and steady is the kind that lasts.

• 01News-led. Every ad starts from a release or a report the company has already published, with the qualified person behind any technical statement. Nothing in a campaign is news for the first time.
• 02Disclosed. Each ad and each landing page names the company as the payer, and the engagement is announced with its fee and term where the exchange requires it.
• 03Measured. The report shows reach, website visits, investor sign-ups and the cost per sign-up, by channel and by market. It never claims a share price, a trading volume or new shareholders, because no campaign can honestly attribute them.
• 04Owned. The ad accounts, the data and the sign-up list belong to the company. When the campaign ends, the audience stays.
• 05Timed with care. No campaign runs during a financing or while insiders are selling. We ask in writing before launch.

Where to start

Start with the news calendar: what you will publish in the next six months, and who you want to read it. Then decide the markets, the channels and the budget. For Teako Minerals we built a content system that turns each drill result into media people watch, and its go-live campaign ran for four weeks across six channels. A paid campaign works best on that kind of foundation.

If you would like to see how a campaign would run for your company, with the fee and the media shown apart, book a call.

Questions