Hotspex Media

I’m the SVP of marketing and strategy for MTY Food Group, one of Canada’s largest restaurant franchisers. We operate over 2,700 quick-service restaurant locations under multiple brands and are expanding through new concepts, acquisitions, and strategic alliances.

We needed help increasing our restaurant awareness, visitation, sales, and transactions.

Hotspex Media provides omnichannel digital and traditional media services. The team manages our campaigns on Meta, Reddit, Google Performance Max, CTV, streaming radio, broadcast radio, traditional TV, and digital and traditional out-of-home (OOH) advertising.

We work with three teammates from Hotspex Media.

We had a previous relationship with Hotspex Media. We chose them over other options because they were a great culture fit, their company values aligned with ours, and they had the knowledge, expertise, and the breadth of experience we needed.

We started working with Hotspex Media in March 2024, and our engagement is ongoing.

Hotspex Media has delivered several clear, quantifiable outcomes that demonstrate meaningful progress and tangible value. First, we’ve seen a measurable increase in media performance across key KPIs, including stronger click-through rates (CTRs), lower cost per thousand impressions (CPMs), and more efficient cost per engagement (CPE) versus our previous benchmarks. This has allowed us to stretch our media budget further while maintaining or improving reach and frequency.Moreover, Hotspex Media’s behavioral insights and optimization tools have helped refine our audience segments, resulting in more relevant impressions and higher-quality traffic. This has been reflected in increased time on site, stronger engagement rates, and reduced bounce rates.Additionally, through brand-lift measurement, we’ve observed improvements in awareness, recall, and consideration – confirming that the creative and media placements resonate with the intended audience. For example, one of our brands has seen an 8% increase in brand sentiment, while another has seen a 30% increase. Hotspex Media’s testing framework has also helped us identify which creative executions and messages perform the strongest. This has enabled us to confidently scale top-performing assets and retire underperformers based on real data. Finally, beyond immediate KPIs, the project has generated deeper audience and messaging insights that will shape future media planning.

Hotspex Media’s project management is highly organized and dependable. The team communicates clearly, sets realistic timelines, and provides consistent updates at every stage of the process. Milestones, deliverables, and next steps are always transparent, which makes collaboration smooth and efficient.Moreover, Hotspex Media consistently delivers work on or ahead of schedule. When timelines are tight, the team demonstrates flexibility and a strong ability to prioritize without compromising quality. Overall, their reliability and structure give us confidence that the project is always moving forward as planned.Regarding communication, we use in-person meetings, virtual meetings, and emails or messaging apps.

What stands out the most about Hotspex Media is their ability to combine deep insights with precision media execution — and their Reticle platform plays a major role in that. Reticle has given us a level of audience clarity and targeting accuracy that we haven’t experienced with other partners. Instead of relying solely on broad demographic assumptions, we’ve been able to reach audiences based on real behavioral and emotional drivers, which has significantly improved relevance and performance. Equally impressive is how seamlessly Hotspex Media’s team translates these insights into actionable media strategies. They don’t just provide data; they provide clear recommendations, thoughtful rationale, and continuous optimization grounded in Reticle’s intelligence. This makes the entire process feel not just efficient, but genuinely collaborative and strategic.Overall, Hotspex Media’s combination of insight-led planning, the power of Reticle, and a team that’s both innovative and easy to work with makes the experience truly unique.

While communication is generally solid, there have been moments when more proactive updates, especially during quieter periods, would have provided additional clarity and confidence around progress.

I'm the marketing manager of a household appliances company.

We wanted to increase brand awareness through digital marketing.

Hotspex Media provides us with digital marketing services, including digital and social media advertising. For every campaign, we design a creative brief, and they then send us a proposal. Then, we work together on the specific deliverables for the campaign. The team has created campaigns for Google and Facebook, as well as general display advertising.

We've worked with about 3–4 teammates from Hotspex Media, including Sasha (Client Success Coordinator).

They had worked with our agency before.

I've been working with Hotspex Media directly since around June 2022, and our engagement is ongoing.

We're very happy with the results of our engagement. It has taken us a lot of testing to understand how people respond to our advertising online. Although our campaigns are quite complicated, I'm very impressed with how well they've been able to organize them.

Hotspex Media has delivered work on time and on budget. We use a combination of different tools and channels to collaborate, including email, phone calls, Google Meet calls, and Google Docs.

Sasha has been the main lead on the project, and she has proved to be extremely detailed and attentive to our needs.

Their attention to detail is amazing.

According to the way I work, I prefer fewer emails and more phone calls. Still, we've already established a mix.

Have proper plans in place and clear goals and objectives.

I’m the social partnerships and PR manager for a medical aesthetics company.

We needed their team’s paid digital marketing expertise.

Hotspex Media provides paid social media and search engine campaign support. The engagement is on pause right now, but we plan to work with them again next quarter.

We work with three or four Hotspex Media teammates.

We’ve been working together since the beginning of 2022.

Hotspex Media has increased our site traffic and driven impressions quarter-over-quarter. We’ve also seen increased search engine rankings for key terms, and our brand visibility has increased. Hotspex Media has met our expectations.

Hotspex Media does exceedingly well with project management. They use phone calls, email, and Coda.

I’m very appreciative of both Samantha's (Digital Media - Account Director) and Alexander’s (SVP, Ad Operations) help throughout the life cycle of the partnership.

Hotspex Media’s industry knowledge is impressive.

No, not at this time.

No, I don’t have any recommendations.

I’m the VP of Marketing for a fiberoptic internet company.

We needed Hotspex Media to provide digital marketing services.

Hotspex Media has been our digital media strategist. Our digital media business is in 15 states, and Hotspex Media has taken on all of it. They have provided services around digital media buys, social media ads, search, display, and connected TV. We provide them with the creative assets and they’re in charge of placing them.

We work with six people including an account director and an analytics resource.

We deal a lot with the president of the company who is great to work with. He’s very interactive with all of the clients and has been a big part of our account.

We found Hotspex Media on Clutch while looking for someone who specialized in digital media. They had great reviews. We contacted them along with a couple of other agencies. We connected really well with Hotspex Media’s amazing team who had a lot of good ideas and were large enough to take on what we needed them to. We started with several back-and-forth calls to make sure they were a good fit. We gave them a very small project of placing connected TV ads to ensure we got good results before turning all of our business over to them. Within one month, we knew we were getting better results with them than we did with our other agency. We then turned all of our digital media business over to them.

We started working together in June 2022, and the collaboration is ongoing.

Hotspex Media has delivered top-quality work. We’ve continually seen a month-over-month increase in our lead generation volume. They’re a very intelligent team who specialize in digital advertising. Hotspex Media really knows what they’re doing and is wonderful to work with. We usually switch agencies yearly but we have no plans of switching. Hotspex Media has been the perfect fit for our company

The team is incredibly responsive. We set a monthly budget that they always make it work. We communicate via Coda and have weekly calls to touch base and share our pain points. We’ve learned so much through these calls.

We’re impressed by Hotspex Media’s analytics team. We really like the dynamic dashboard they have that displays real-time data analytics for us.

No, they’ve done very well for us.

Have weekly phone calls with your core team.

I am the Marketing Director of PFU America

Ricoh is a leading provider of integrated digital services and print and imaging solutions designed to support digital transformation of workplaces and optimize business performance.

Referral

2-5 Employees

HSM is responsible for the day-to-day management of paid digital marketing campaigns including paid search, display and social advertising strategies across both our B2B and B2C business.

Increase in ROAs, leads, and valuable insights.

HSM is incredibly responsive and supportive. I found the tools they employ help streamline our processes and ultimately help us achieve a higher ROI on our media spend across the board.

Their team clearly has a handle on all components of their business, allowing for the time and dedication to learn about our business. They understand our unique needs in our market and make insightful recommendations.

Any feedback has been swiftly addressed, so I have no areas for improvement at this time.