How much does TV Advertising cost?
Updated Aug 2026
A QUESTION WE’RE ASKED A LOT: HOW MUCH DOES IT COST TO ADVERTISE ON TV?
Answer: There are two TV advertising costs: buying spots between TV shows. Rates for the smaller digital channels start around £90 to £190 for daytime and £180 to £370 for peak time. TV adverts during Good Morning Britain or Lorraine can cost between £3,800 – £4,500. The other cost is TV advert production, which involves creating the TV advert. These range from £40,000 for a straightforward animated TV commercial to £320,000 and above for a blockbuster TV advert with top stars and a famous music track.
TV ADVERTISING STATS FROM INDUSTRY BODY – THINKBOX
- £5.61 TV (Linear and BVOD) average full profit ROI over a sustained period.
- 46.6% Linear TV alone accounts for 46.6% of full advertising-generated profit.
- £3.86 Online Video (which is mostly YouTube) has an average full profit ROI.
- £5.94 TV (Linear alone) has an average full profit ROI of £5.94 per £1 spent.
MEDIA PLANNING GUIDELINE FIGURES
The numbers listed are a guide to the average price paid for a 30-second TV advert on UK TV networks. Pricing does vary throughout the year.
ADVERTISING ON TV
Deciding which TV channels best fit your brand’s demographic ensures your TV advertising costs are not wasted. If you’re new to TV media planning and need more information on the advertising production process, do get in touch with one of our producers.
Media planning is crucial to the success of your television advertising campaign. Before building a successful TV advertising campaign, developing a robust media planning and media buying strategy is critical.
ADVERTISE ON ITV
If you’re looking for the most significant marketplace to show your adverts, you can’t do better than advertising on ITV. Shows like Good Morning Britain offer one of the most extensive commercial opportunities in the UK. Whether planning a massive TV advertising campaign or targeting a micro-region, ITV allows media to be purchased flexibly.
What are the latest trends in ITV advertising campaigns?
ITV has an intelligent family of channels that help campaigns hit tighter demographics. Channels like ITV Be show mainly a reality-based output, while CITV show kids programming. Choosing one of the smaller ITV channels makes TV advertising a more compelling proposition for smaller brands. Whatever your market, there’s probably an ITV channel for you. Like other broadcasters, ITV has invested heavily in online platforms. ITVX has over 35 million registered users. ITV is divided into 15 regions, which makes geo-targeting easy.
INVEST IN A CHANNEL 4 ADVERT
Channel 4 has done a great job acquiring top-rated shows and commissioning must-watch shows like Gogglebox and Bake-Off. These shows drive new viewers to Channel 4. Data shows that in 2024, Channel 4 grew its streaming and linear audiences. Channel 4’s streaming platform has seen a 32% year-on-year increase in viewing minutes.
Channel 4 launched a new competition in May 2025, offering UK small-business brands the chance to win a TV advert on Channel 4 and expert marketing support. The advertising package is worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.
ADVERTISING ON CHANNEL 5 IS LESS EXPENSIVE THAN OTHER NETWORKS
Channel 5 is a great place for family viewing, such as All Creatures Great and Small. Channel 5's online platform, My5, has experienced four consecutive years of growth.
ADVERTISING ON SKY
The Sky audience are committed viewers; on average, Sky customers watch four and a half hours of TV each day. Sky has an expanse of content for all the family, from Peppa Pig and Paw Patrol for youngsters to Premier League Football and F1 for adults. If you're looking to advertise your brand against sport Sky is the obvious choice.
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 £100,000. If you want to reach a wider audience, you can spend £200,000 on advertising on ITV.
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 £1.79 returned for every £1 invested in the first 3-6 months. If you're looking for a boost in sales, launching a TV advertising campaign can really move the needle. If you're a considered purchase like financial services or travel then TV advertising gives you the credibility you need.
Over time, the cumulative effect TV advertising (Linear & BVOD) has on your brand’s reach increases this to an average ROI of £5.61 after three years. TV delivers 54.7% of total advertising-generated profit over three years despite TV currently commanding 43.6% of average advertising budget. - Thinkbox Profit Ability 2 study 2025.
TV ADVERTISING COSTS UK
A media buyer handles the process of buying advert slots on TV channels. Toast TV 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.
IS TV ADVERTISING JUST FOR BIG BRANDS?
TV advertising isn't just for huge brands - in 2024, 30% of advertisers on UK linear TV spent less than £50,000 on their media budgets, and 51% spent less than £250,000 Smaller brands have realised the power of TV advertising to grow their audience and lift their brand to a nationwide level.
BVOD and SVOD ADVERTISING – A BRIGHT NEW STARS
BVOD – Broadcaster Video-on-Demand and advertising on SVOD - Subscriber Video-On-Demand are great ways to reach people who 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. Ampere Analysis predicted that by the end of 2024 the advertising marketplace in the streaming sector will be worth £1.1bn. That number is catching up with the linear TV advertising market which is worth £3.58bn.
The number of subscribers to streamers in the UK reached around 50 million at the end of 2024. Estimates say that around 20% of Netflix UK subscribers are using the ad-supported tier. New TV channels and formats appear all the time. With the pull of Netflix content and the numbers signed up for ad-supported viewing Netflix has a compelling case for being in a brands marketing mix.
TV ADVERTISING COSTS COMPARED TO ONLINE VIDEO
Information from industry body Thinkbox puts it clearly: Spot TV advertising (linear and BVOD) averages £7.78 per thousand exposures (Thinkbox). YouTube is pretty close at £11.63. Other online video, however, is £129. The challenge for other online video is that even though the CPM for a start is pretty low, ad avoidance is easy and is very high — TikTok's own ad metrics define a "focused view" as requiring at least 6 seconds of watch time or an interaction before it counts, and Thinkbox models TikTok ad exposure at just 3.4% of content time, versus 4.1% for YouTube. As a result the equivalent cost for 30 seconds of viewing time goes through the roof.
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 an offer code on the endframe, which could attribute sales to TV advertising. Advert tracking has now progressed to online software that can determine how well a media plan performs. Tracking ensures that your TV advertising cost is being multiplied and returned in profits.
It is possible to track the effectiveness of a TV ad campaign and make adjustments to the placements of ads. Tracking software can correlate a TV ad running with hits on a website or an increased sales spike in an E-commerce platform. 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 direct response (a call to action) and brand recognition. Using DRTV advertising (Direct Response 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 unique URL can direct the viewer straight to the product.
With a regional TV media buying strategy and DRTV advertising, unique URLs ensure the right message gets to the viewer.
*Stats sourced from Thinkbox and BARB.
TV ADVERTISING BY TOAST TV
Toast TV is known for beautiful TV advertising production for companies of all sizes. As a TV advertising agency we handle the entire production from script to screen. Running an advert on TV allows companies to build trusted brands and boost sales by putting their product in front of many potential new customers.
WORKING WITH TOAST TV
Get in touch with Toast TV if you’d like to talk about TV advertising or you have a question about how a TV advert is produced. Use the contact form on this page to tell us about your project. If you have a project and need a briefing template, download our free TV advertising template or Video Briefing templates.
