How Much Does It Cost To Create A Tv Advert

TV Advertising Costs in the UK

We've broken down TV advertising costs into media buying (TV ad slots) and TV advert production (costs of making adverts). Call us on 020 7437 0506 for a ball-park quote.

A question we're asked a lot: How much does it cost to advertise on TV?

Answer: There are two television advertising costs: buying adverts the spots between TV shows in the UK. Rates for the smaller digital channels start around £50 to £150 for daytime and £150 to £300 for peak time. TV adverts during Good Morning Britain or Lorraine can cost between £3,000 – £4,000. And production costs for actually making the TV advert. These can range from around £50,000 for a straightforward TV commercial to £250,000 for a blockbuster TV advert with top stars and a famous music track.

It's possible to start your TV advertising campaign for as little as £100K. With TV advertising delivering an average of £1.79 returned for every £1 invested in the first 3-6 months. Television advertising can really turn sales around.

New to TV Advertising packages

Are you new to TV Advertising? We offer a launch package for brands who are looking for TV advertising. We can make a stylish DRTV advert for £50K that can be used over and over again and provide a national media package starting at £50K.

We'll get your advert in front of UK viewers. Fill in the form to submit the necessary details, and we'll get in touch.

As a Video Production Company, we're capable of delivering TV adverts and a full range of social media video assets.

Cost of TV Advertising Update for 2021 – COVID-19

According to the industry body, Thinkbox, average TV viewing, especially Linear TV viewing, has increased in the post-pandemic period. TV viewing figures show an increase of 36 minutes per day amongst the population. Figures for linear TV viewing have increased the most, with subscriber VOD coming increasing also. For obvious reasons, cinema, watching has taken a hit.

According to the World Advertising Research Centre WARC global TV advertising spend has fallen by around 13% in the period after the COVID-19 outbreak. Some categories of advertisers are down much more. Leisure and entertainment TV advertising is down around 28%. The travel and tourism sector has seen a 31% reduction in TV advertising spend.

Discounted TV advert slots have become a great incentive. Brands who have thought about adding TV advertising to their marketing efforts can now test the waters with a smaller investment than before. Another change brought on by COVID-19 has been the increased TV viewing figures. These two factors combined means that smaller companies can now get their products and services in front of millions of potential customers for much less than ever before.

Toast has developed a set of Covid Shooting Guidelines to keep our TV advertising shoots safe.

TV Advertising Cost

Media planning is crucial to the success of your television advertising campaign. Toast build bespoke media packages to ensure the TV ads we create are seen by the right people, at the right time and on the right channels. Before setting out to build a successful TV advertising campaign, it's important to develop a robust media planning strategy.

Deciding which TV channels offer the best fit with your brand's demographic makes sure your TV advertising costs don't go to waste. If you're new to TV media planning and need more information on the process of advertising on TV do get in touch.

Media planning guideline figures

The numbers listed are a guide to the average price paid for a 30 sec TV advert on UK TV networks. Pricing does vary throughout the year.

Advertise on ITV

Good Morning Britain or Lorraine ads cost are around £3,000 – £4,000
Daytime slots on ITV are around £3,500 to £4,500 and peak time slots can cost from £10,000 to £33,000.

If you're looking for the most significant marketplace to show your adverts, you can't do better than to advertise on ITV. Shows like Good Morning Britain offer one of the most extensive commercial opportunities in the UK. Whether you're planning a massive TV advertising campaign or trying to target a micro-region ITV allows media to be purchased flexibly.

ITV has an intelligent family of channels that help campaigns hit tighter demographics. Channels like ITV Be show mainly a reality-based output or CITV show kids programming. Whatever your market there's probably an ITV channel for you. Picking one of the smaller ITV channels makes the cost of TV advertising a more effective proposition for smaller brands.

Advertise on Channel 4

A 30-second slot on daytime TV can cost between £1,000 to £2,000 peak rates for shows such as Hollyoaks and Catastrophe are around £10,000 to £20,000. Channel 4 have done a great job of acquiring top-rated shows and producing must-watch shows like Gogglebox.

Top Channel 4 programmes from September 2021

The Great British Bake Off (21 September) –  9.57 million viewers
US Open Tennis Final (11 September) –6.01 million viewers
Gogglebox (24 September) –5.07 million viewers
Celebrity Gogglebox (10 September)  – 3.56 million viewers
Help (16 September) –  3.22 million viewers

Advertising on Channel 5 is less expensive than other networks

A slot in daytime usually costs around £800 to £1,600. Peak time ad breaks can be had for £2,500 to £4,500 in shows like Big Brother. Channel 5 is a great place for family viewing such as All Creatures Great and Small.

Advertising on Sky

With their smaller viewing figures, the cost of advertising on TV with Sky is naturally lower, an ad slot in daytime shows on Sky costs around £150 to £250. Advertising during the peak time costs about £650 to £1,150. Sky Adsmart is a great platform that allows advertisers to target their ads to a select group of viewers. For more information about Sky see our Adsmart page.

Other digital channels can be a great place to advertise your brand:

Rates for smaller digital channels can be around £50 to £150 for day time up to £150 to £300 for peak time. Great if you know your audience is watching those channels.

How much does a TV advert cost?

From the numbers, you can see a TV advert campaign running for a month can easily be had for £30,000. If you want to target a wider audience, you can spend £200,000 and advertise on ITV.

Budgets can go up; if you absolutely must get in front of a vast X-factor audience, you're looking at spending millions on media. Hopefully, this has answered the question, How much is TV advertising? The other cost is production, more on that below.

*Data sourced from Thinkbox and TheDrum

cost of advertising on tv uk

tv advertising costs uk

cost of tv advertising uk

It's all about the Return on Investment

At Toast we always look to deliver high ROI for our clients. TV advertising is the best medium for producing not only short term returns, with an average of £1.73 returned for every £1 invested in the first 3-6 months.

Over time the cumulative effect TV advertising has on your brand's reach increases this to an average ROI of £4.20 after three years. TV delivers 71% of total advertising-generated profit over three years despite TV currently commanding 54% of average advertising budget. - Thinkbox Profit Ability study 2017.

TV advertising costs UK

A media buyer handles the process of buying advert slots on TV channels. Toast has close links with many buyers who we use to manage our media buying process. The average cost of getting one person to see your advert in the UK is around 0.6p.

TV Media Budgets

Information from an industry body Thinkbox study run in 2018 shows that over 900 advertisers spent less than £50,000 on their TV media buying budgets. Getting brands in front of huge TV audiences is no longer exclusively for well-known brands with large budgets. Advertising your company and your products next to one of the big brands in a TV advert break helps to build trust in new to market companies. TV Advertising is a great way to create mass appeal which is an important step up from social media advertising into the big leagues.

Advertising on TV is becoming more accessible. This increased affordability contrasts with the changes that have been happening in Pay Per Click advertising. The lack of platform choice in PPC advertising has started to drive costs higher, and a single click can now cost upwards of £20.

BVOD Advertising – A bright new star

Broadcaster Video-on-Demand (BVOD) and advertising on BVOD is a great way to reach people that watch less linear TV. BVOD adverts are often non-skippable, so your advert gets the viewers full attention without all the screen clutter which fights for attention on YouTube. According to recent data from Thinkbox, VOD watching increased by 30% in 2019.

Another key stat from the BVOD and VOD world, 40.2% of VOD watching is taking place of a TV set. -Touchpoints 2020 survey. This is important because adverts on TV are full screen, without the interruptions normally found on social media or YouTube.

The statistics of TV watching

A 2020 report from The Global TV Group, states that:
The average viewer in the UK watched a total of 3 hours, 3 minutes of TV a day in 2020.
16-24s watch over twice as much TV on other devices than the average viewer.
TV accounts for 76% of video advertising consumption in the UK.

Tracking your ad's effectiveness

One of the greatest revolutions in TV advertising has been the recent innovation in tracking the viewing of TV adverts. Previously the best way to measure a TV ad's effectiveness was to use something like an offer code on the endframe which could attribute sales to TV advertising. Advert tracking has now progressed to online software which can determine how well a media plan is performing. Tracking makes sure that your cost of TV advertising is being multiplied and returned in profits.

Tracking software can correlate a TV ad running with hits on a website or an increased sales spike in an E-commerce platform. It is possible to track the effectiveness of a TV ad campaign and make adjustments to the placements of ads. Making changes to the media plan in the weeks after launch can get the best ROI from a media budget.

Getting a Direct Response

Advertising on TV is excellent at both direct response (a call to action) and brand recognition. Direct response using TV advertising has become even more potent due to second screen watching. Viewers often watch TV with a tablet or smartphone nearby. A viewer seeing a URL during a direct response TV advert now has the perfect platform on hand to interact with your website.

Offering a tailored URL from the TV advert cuts down any friction a viewer might experience. Rather than arriving at a website's home page and navigating to the specific product page. A special URL can direct the viewer straight to the product.

With a regional TV media buying strategy and DRTV advertising, unique URLs make sure the right message gets to the viewer.

*Stats sourced from Thinkbox and BARB.

Testing the market with Radio Advertising

If your business isn't quite ready for the outlay involved in TV advertising. Why not try out your marketing plan using Radio Advertising? The costs of radio advertising are much lower than TV. The UK's vast network of local and national radio stations allows for tailored radio campaigns to reach potential customers.

Production Costs – How much does a TV advert cost?

Below you'll find top-line packages that shows what's achievable at different levels. TV remains the most effective form of advertising there is and is now more accessible than ever. Get in touch with one of our producers to discuss!

Intro to TV Advertising

We have extensive experience working with new-to-TV brands, managing many successful TV and digital tests. If your production budget won't quite stretch to live-action, we would suggest a 2D motion graphics treatment. Like the recent commercial we produced for Alpharooms or a simple character animation like Ancestry.

Alpharooms TV Advert

Ancestry DNA TV Advert

TV Advertising Packages for Start-ups

Our start-up packages are perfect for brands who have already successfully tested on TV and digital and are ready to make a more substantial media investment for their next campaign. At this level, we would expect to be able to start thinking about a live-action shoot. Toast was lucky enough to work on Innocent's first-ever TV advertising campaign. A simple shoot in a park with a chicken launched a global brand.

Innocent TV Advert

Varooma TV Ad

TV Packages for Challenger brands

Our challenger brands package is suited for a brand looking to transition into a household name. This level should open the doors to a more elaborate shoot, like the stop motion advert we produced for Tootle.

Aids Alliance Charity

Tootle TV Commercial

TV Advertising Packages for Established brands

Our packages are for established brands looking at brand building rather than brand awareness and direct response. Further investment into production will allow for a high-end live-action shoot with very high production values or integrated 3D graphics like Cancer Research.

Cancer Research TV Advert

City Index TV Campaign

Working with Toast

Get in touch with Toast if you'd like to talk to Toast about TV media buying. Or you've got a script, and you're wondering how much does it cost to produce a TV advert in the UK. Use the contact form on this page to tell us about your project.

Contact us for a quote