I was watching comedy central around 2am and I saw this commercial for the new Nine Inch Nails album… the commercial was about 2 minutes long and it was the new video for “The Hand that Feeds”… how much do you think that must cost? It runs a few times a night. How much do commercials cost on normal channels, too? I’m so curious.
Are you asking how much they cost to produce or how much they cost to air?
I don’t know how much they cost to produce. If you’re asking how much they cost to air, that can vary widely, based on what network they’re airing on, what show, what time of day, how much they’re spending on the total buy, if they’re a long time advertiser, the length of the spot, etc.
how much they cost to air…
One 30-second prime time commercial, Columbia-Jefferson City Missouri, approximately $600.
One 30-second prime time commercial on a broadcast network, last time I heard was in the neighborhood of $60,000-$125,000.
I’ve heard during a particularly popular time-slot, a million dollars is not a ridiculous sum. They make it back in spades when we all run out and buy Budweiser. Or tampax. Or Viagra. Or whatever.
A friend told me for about 800K, you can make a pretty decent infomercial, saturate the late-night time-slots for awhile, and you’re pretty much set for life.
If you want to find out what television commercial time costs in a variety of areas, the Standard Rate and Data Service (SRDS) is something that just about any academic library that supports a business program will have on the shelf. Public libraries may or may not have it, depending on their focus, but I’d expect that many main libraries have it - those often develop a business collection.
I’m not at work, so I can’t check it right now, but it lists how much it costs to purchase commercial time at various times of day in various metro areas around the country. It also lists costs for radio advertising and newspaper advertising.
It can vary widely, and most rate cards are considere proprietary information, and unless you’re buying time, you won’t know.
It depends on ratings. You can get more eyeballs to see your commercial during the Super Bowl than 4:00am on a local station, so the network can charge more to air your spot during the Super Bowl. Also, if you’re willing to spend a lot of money, the broadcast outlet may cut you a break on the individual spot rate. The downside is if the network does not deliver the ratings they promised, they may owe you free spots to get you to where you’re supposed to be.
In other words, they promise that 40 million people will see your spot during the Super Bowl. Your spot is scheduled to air in the second half, there’s a huge blowout, and instead of 40 million people seeing your spot, only 25 million people see it. The network owes you 15 million eyeballs, so they have to run $0 spots to make up the missing ratings.
There’s also spots called direct response. These are the Orange Glo, Enzyte, Tempur Pedic ads, where they give you an 800 number to call. These spots generally have a lower rate, they are immediately pre-emptible (meaning they can be bumped for a more “important” spot) and don’t have guaranteed ratings.