What It Costs: Ad Prices From TV’s Largest Buys to the Smallest Screens
Published on April 06, two thousand fifteen .
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Sticker shock. Annoyance. Envy. Wonderment. No matter where you sit in the marketing ecosystem — whether you’re a buyer or seller of media, or both — you’re likely to practice a range of reactions and emotions as you browse thorugh this sample from our inaugural What It Costs package. If you also end up feeling a fresh surge of curiosity — about the price tags for other media products and placements — the good news is that the following sample is just the beginning; What It Costs will live on as an ever-expanding weekly feature in Ad Age’s soon-to-relaunch DataCenter.
$400,000
The average outlay for a commercial during the fifth season of AMC’s “The Walking Dead,” making it the costliest scripted series on TV. The Oct. 12, 2014, season premiere drew 17.Trio million viewers; the March twenty nine season finale, 15.8 million.
$750,000
The amount Snapchat requests per “Brand Story” ad, a branded post (or “snap”) that emerges within the app’s “Stories” feed. Snapchat doesn’t disclose user numbers.
The cost for a thousand impressions on Hulu for standard run-of-site in-stream movie ads, with a minimum requirement of two ads per campaign.
Credit: Andy Lyons/Getty Photos
$1.55 million
The cost of thirty seconds of ad time in the championship game of the two thousand fifteen NCAA Boys’s Division I Basketball Tournament on CBS, when Duke will take on Wisconsin. That’s up from $1.49 million in 2014. Last year the championship game averaged 21.Two million viewers, down from 23.Four million in 2013.
$112,000
The average cost for thirty seconds of commercial time in prime time broadcast TV last year. That’s up from $110,00 in 2013.
$344,827
The average cost of a 30-second commercial during “The Big Bang Theory” on CBS, the most expensive comedy on TV. “Big Bang” averaged 16.7 million viewers this season through March 12.
$50,000
The cost of one full-color ad on the front page of The Fresh York Times. To emerge on the Times’ front page, tho’, marketers must commit to a certain frequency, such as front-page ads every Tuesday for six months; the total cost of running frequent page-one ads would likely top $1 million.
The average cost of a thousand impressions for a 30-second commercial in broadcast prime time in 2014, down from $25.06 in 2013.
The cost of a thousand impressions for a sponsored photo on Instagram, down from $40 in two thousand thirteen when Instagram very first flipped out ads. Instagram says more than three hundred million people around the world check out the photo-sharing app each month. Instagram’s minimum ad spend is $200,000.
The cost of a thousand impressions for a sponsored movie on Instagram.
$Two.Five million
The cost of four weeks on Times Square’s fattest billboard, Clear Channel’s eight-story sign on Broadway from West 45th Street to West 46th Street.