How Much Does a TV Commercial Cost?

Few things have such a cost variance as television ads. For most people, what’s not surprising is how expensive they can be. However, what may be surprising is how inexpensive TV advertising can be. (Having said that, the least expensive options may not be the best opportunities, either).

Overall, the cost of producing a commercial can run from as little as $1,000 if you are using stock photography and a simple voice-over, to upwards of hundreds of thousands of dollars if you need to have multiple cameras, hire union actors and filmmakers and are looking for a final look that reflects high production value.

Following are some fundamentals about TV advertising costs.


1) A TV commercial(s) needs to be produced
2) The TV ad needs to be broadcast

If you have a fixed budget, you can spend less on the production and more on getting the message out on the airwaves. Conversely, you could spend a bigger chunk of the budget on the production of the commercial and spend less on the broadcasting. For most advertisers, the budget is dependent upon an evaluation of short and long-term business objectives.

Broadcasting costs can be as cheap as $25 for 30 seconds in a small market, or thousands of dollars in large markets. But of course, you cannot buy just one spot. Hence, you’ll be buying a package of spots. So, even on the low end, for the least expensive placements, you’ll be spending a few thousand dollars, depending upon the market.

Furthermore, do you want to produce just one commercial, or a few? Multiple commercials do a better job of getting your message across. Not only can multiple commercials reduce viewer fatigue, but they can emphasize a broader or more complex message via bite-size pieces. (A cardinal rule is to “keep each message simple!”).


National TV advertising is more expensive. Although some of the biggest brands may spend millions of dollars for a 30-second spot on the Superbowl, a more routine number would be in the six-figure range for 30 seconds on national TV.

Conversely, local TV can be surprisingly economical. If you are a local or regional company and you aren’t selling a product or service to a national market, then the decision is simple: buy local TV advertising.

A local commercial on a local station at 2:00 am can run as cheap at $25 per 30 seconds. However, 2:00 in the morning may not be the best time to advertise your product or service, even though it can be inexpensive.


There are a number of factors that determine the cost of broadcasting a TV ad. Such variables include:

  • The region it will be aired (some are more expensive)
  • Time of day
  • Day of week
  • Quantity of expected viewers
  • Length of the commercial (15 sec, 30 sec, 60 sec or a 30 min infomercial)
  • How frequently the spots will run

In brief, the cost of broadcasting a 30-second spot mostly varies according to the number of viewers expected to be watching it.

To throw out some ballpark numbers on the low side, which would pertain to many small- to mid-sized businesses, a 30-second time slot in a medium-sized market can be purchased for as little as $5 per 1,000 viewers.


Nowadays, you can often get more bang for your ad dollars by simultaneously promoting your TV commercial(s) online. In fact, some advertisers will have a more sophisticated online ad campaign in conjunction with TV.

For example, let’s say you have one (or more) TV commercials rotating throughout the day, targeted towards a specific geography and demographic. Perhaps this would be viewers in one town, or one county, or a region of the country (say, Southwest USA). You could also have the same spots showing online in the same geography as the TV campaign, but also be more precise about the demographics of the targeted audience: such as age, gender, parental status, household income, job categories, and interests.

Furthermore, the online ads could follow a similar messaging and picture elements, but could be longer in time and with more variations.

The point is that both online ads and TV ads are found to work better when they are done at the same time, instead of doing each independent of each other. For example, you might have one or two 30-second TV commercials running simultaneously, but at the same time have 6-12 online video ads that are 15-seconds to several minutes in length. (There is also a strategy of promoting a series of 6-second “reminder” spots that rotate in series with longer “story” spots.)

There’s a lot one can learn about TV commercials and online advertising as well as creating combined campaigns, but one final point worth emphasizing is that online advertising is an effective way to TEST elements of your TV commercial(s) before producing them. In other words, if your product or service has too many benefits to include in a 30-second spot, which do you choose to include? The solution is to test each element online and find which generates the greatest under engagement. For example, let’s say you have twelve points you want to communicate. That’s way too much information for a 30-second spot. One point is ideal, but if you have two or three simple points, that can be workable. But which of those points should be featured? Well, by running simple (and inexpensive) online ads of each of twelve points (“tests”), we can find which points generate the most audience response and that will help inform the messaging of your TV commercial(s).


Of course, the costs of producing and airing TV commercials are important to any business. However, in many cases the TV ads would be best if they contain The Three Essential Ingredients for Successful TV Advertising.

And bear in mind that a quantity of airings is vital to measuring effectiveness. If you run a commercial just once, it’s very unlikely you’ll see any increase in sales. Repetitive broadcasting generates the viewership familiarity that will make your message memorable.


For extra credit, you may want to visit the #1 Error in TV Commercial & Video Production.


For more information, including concept, process, editing, distribution, advisement and examples, visit VIDEO & TV.