Trying to figure out how much a 30-second TV ad costs feels a bit like asking "how long is a piece of string?" The answer can be anything from $200 for a local spot in a small town to over $7 million during the Super Bowl. That range is so huge it’s almost useless.
The final price tag really boils down to two core components: the cost to produce the ad itself, and the cost to air it. Getting your head around this split is the first step to figuring out if TV is a real growth channel for your business, or just a fast way to burn cash.
Breaking Down the Real Cost of a TV Ad
You’ve scaled your SaaS with paid social and content, but now you're hitting a wall. A TV ad sounds like the next big move, but the numbers feel like a gut punch. It's easy to see a seven-figure Super Bowl price tag and immediately write off the entire channel as out of reach.
But that’s a mistake. The price isn't one terrifying figure; it’s a spectrum. The key is to stop thinking about one massive expense and start breaking it down into two separate, manageable investments:
- Production Cost: This is everything that goes into creating the actual commercial. Think scriptwriting, animation, voice-over talent, and editing. It’s the "making of" budget.
- Media Buy: This is what you pay a network or station to broadcast your ad to their audience. This is where the price swings wildly based on viewership, time of day, and location.
Why This Split Matters
Framing your budget this way changes everything. You could produce a lean, effective animated video for your SaaS product for just a few thousand dollars—a fraction of a live-action shoot. That's a different world from the old "Agency Drain" model where a six-figure production is the assumed starting point.
Once that high-quality ad is in hand, you can strategically spend the rest of your budget on a targeted media buy. To see what's possible with modern production, check out these examples of AI-powered video creation.
This approach isn't just about saving money; it's about control and testing. By separating production from the media buy, you can focus on creating a clear, structured message first and then find the most efficient way to deliver it. It’s a principle that applies elsewhere, too. For instance, just as you unpack the true investment in a TV ad, a similar approach is needed for understanding the real cost of transcription services, where you have to look past the sticker price to evaluate different pricing models and potential hidden fees.
TV Ad Cost Spectrum At a Glance
To give you a clearer picture, here’s a quick breakdown of what you might expect to pay for a 30-second spot in different markets as of 2025-2026.
| Market Type | Typical Cost Range (per 30-sec spot) | Best For |
|---|---|---|
| Local TV (Small Market) | $200 – $1,500 | Startups testing a specific geographic area or local service businesses. |
| Local TV (Major Market) | $2,000 – $50,000+ | Companies with a strong presence in a major city like New York or LA. |
| National Broadcast TV | $100,000 – $500,000+ | Well-funded brands aiming for mass-market awareness during primetime. |
| National Cable TV | $10,000 – $75,000 | Niche brands targeting specific demographics (e.g., ESPN for sports fans). |
| Connected TV (CTV/OTT) | $25 – $55 (CPM) | Performance-focused marketers who want digital-style targeting on TV screens. |
These are ballpark figures, of course. But they show that "TV advertising" isn't one monolithic cost. It's a ladder you can climb, starting with smaller, more affordable steps.
Production vs. Media Buy: The Two Halves of Your TV Ad Budget
Thinking about a TV ad as a single line item on a spreadsheet is the fastest way to get your budget completely wrong. It’s not one cost. It's two entirely different expenses that barely influence each other, and getting tripped up here is why so many founders either overspend or give up before they even start.
First up is your Production Cost. This is everything it takes to actually create your 30-second masterpiece—from hammering out the script and designing the visuals to hiring a great voice actor and editing the final cut.
The second, and usually much larger, piece of the puzzle is the Media Buy. This is what you pay a network to broadcast your ad. It’s where the real variability kicks in, driven entirely by audience size and demand. Getting this split right is the first step to spending smarter.
Demystifying Production Costs: What Are You Actually Paying For?
Production is the "making of" your ad. For a SaaS company, this almost always means a crisp animated explainer or a clean, screen-recording-based demo. Forget massive film crews and celebrity endorsements; that’s the old agency model we’re trying to avoid.
Instead, a lean and effective production budget focuses on clarity. A professional animated spot can often be created for between $3,000 and $15,000. That buys you a sharp, effective video that explains your product's value without the high-production fluff that doesn't actually move the needle on sign-ups.
Here's a simple look at where that money goes:
- Scriptwriting & Storyboarding: The single most critical part. A strong script is the foundation of a high-performing ad, mapping out the story before a single pixel is designed.
- Animation & Design: This covers the custom graphics, character movements, and UI mockups that bring your software to life on screen.
- Voice-Over & Sound Design: A professional voice-over adds authority and trust, while the right sound effects make the video more engaging and memorable.
- Editing & Post-Production: Pulling all the pieces together, timing the visuals to the narration, and adding that final layer of polish.
Your goal isn't to win a film festival award. It's to create a clear, repeatable asset that explains your value proposition in under 30 seconds. A killer script is the most important part of this process, which is why a solid explainer video script template is your best starting point.
Understanding the Media Buy: Where the Big Money Goes
Once your ad is ready, you need to pay to get it on the air. This is the media buy, and its cost is a completely different beast. The price tag is determined by one simple thing: how many people will see your ad and how valuable that audience is to advertisers.
Think of it like real estate. A storefront on a quiet side street is cheap. The same exact storefront in Times Square is astronomically expensive. TV ad slots work the same way. A Tuesday morning spot costs a fraction of a Thursday primetime slot during a hit show for one reason: eyeballs.
Media buyers use a few key metrics to measure value, but the one you'll hear most often is CPM, or "Cost Per Mille." It simply means the cost per thousand viewers. If a spot costs $10,000 and reaches 500,000 people, your CPM is $20. This number is your yardstick for comparing the efficiency of different ad placements.
To go deeper on how this all works, exploring guides on media planning and buying strategies is a smart move. It’s about building a real campaign, not just buying spots. By separating the fixed cost of production from the variable cost of the media buy, you gain total control—making smarter, tactical decisions about where and when to spend your money to reach the right people.
Local, National, and Streaming TV Ad Costs Compared
Not all television is created equal, and the price you pay for an ad is directly tied to who you're trying to reach. A 30-second spot doesn't have a single, fixed price; it’s a reflection of audience size, geography, and demand. Getting a handle on these different tiers is the key to figuring out where your SaaS product fits in.
Think of it like choosing a venue for a launch event. You could book a local community hall, a city-wide convention center, or a massive national arena. Each option serves a different purpose and comes with a wildly different price tag.
The Accessible Starting Point: Local TV
Local TV advertising is your community hall. It’s the most accessible entry point for testing the waters in a specific city or region. You're buying ad time from a local affiliate of a major network—like a local ABC or NBC station—to reach viewers in one Designated Market Area (DMA).
For a SaaS company, this can be a surprisingly strategic move. If you're targeting an industry concentrated in one city—say, biotech in Boston or finance in New York—a local campaign can be a cost-effective way to get on the big screen.
- Cost Range: A 30-second spot can be as low as $200 in a small market or climb to $10,000+ in a major metro area during primetime.
- Best For: Geo-targeted campaigns, testing new ad creative on a smaller scale, or reaching customers in a specific industry hub.
The trade-off, of course, is limited reach. You’re only talking to one city at a time, which isn't a fit for a product with a national user base.
The Big Leagues: National Broadcast and Cable
Scaling up from local TV brings you to national advertising—the convention centers and arenas of the ad world. This is where you buy time to air your ad across the entire country, and it splits into two main camps.
National Broadcast TV (think ABC, NBC, CBS) is all about maximum reach. You’re buying a spot on a network that goes out to millions of households at once. This is where you'll find the six- and seven-figure price tags, especially during popular primetime shows. It’s a powerful tool for building mass brand awareness, but it's often too broad and expensive for a targeted SaaS product.
National Cable TV (like ESPN, HGTV, or AMC) offers a bit more focus. While still national, these channels cater to specific interests and demographics. Advertising on a tech-focused show on a channel like CNBC, for example, allows you to reach a more relevant audience than a general broadcast sitcom, often at a lower cost.
The core idea behind both is blanketing a large area. It's a volume play, designed to get your brand in front of as many eyes as possible. While effective for consumer brands, it can feel like using a sledgehammer when a scalpel is needed for a specific B2B audience.
The Game Changer: Connected TV and Streaming
This is where things get really interesting for SaaS businesses. Connected TV (CTV) refers to any content streamed through a device connected to a television—think Roku, Apple TV, or smart TVs running apps like Hulu and Netflix. It combines the big-screen impact of a traditional TV ad with the data-driven targeting of digital marketing.
Instead of just buying a spot on a channel, you can target viewers based on their interests, demographics, and even online behaviors. This precision minimizes wasted ad spend and dramatically increases the chances of reaching your ideal customer profile.
The infographic below shows how a typical TV ad budget breaks down between creating the ad (production) and airing it (media buy).
As you can see, the bulk of your investment goes toward the media buy, which makes choosing the right platform absolutely critical for getting a return on your budget.
Unlike traditional TV's spot-buying, CTV often uses a CPM (Cost Per Mille) model, where you pay per thousand impressions. Pricing on major streaming platforms reflects this shift to performance-based models. For instance, Netflix charges a $20-$30 CPM for programmatic ads and $45-$65 CPM for direct buys, while Hulu ranges from $10-$30 CPM and Disney+ commands $30-$50 CPM.
For a SaaS founder, this is a logical evolution. You can apply the same performance-driven mindset from your digital campaigns to the most powerful screen in the house. You can explore our collection of high-impact video ads and commercials to see how a structured approach can work on these platforms.
Key Factors That Influence Your TV Advertising Costs
Ever wonder why one SaaS company paid $5,000 for a TV spot while another paid $50,000 for the same 30 seconds on the same channel? It's not a pricing mystery. The answer lies in a handful of critical variables that media buyers negotiate every single day.
Getting a handle on these levers is the key to securing better rates, sidestepping overpriced slots, and making every dollar of your media buy count. Think of them as the knobs and dials that determine the final price tag for airing your ad.
Time of Day and Dayparting
By far the biggest factor driving ad cost is when it airs. Ad pros break the broadcast day into segments called dayparts, and they are definitely not created equal.
A spot during a late-night movie is cheap for a reason—most of your ideal customers are fast asleep. On the flip side, an ad running during primetime (usually 8 PM to 11 PM) commands a huge premium because that's when viewership peaks.
- Primetime: The most expensive slots, perfect for reaching a massive, engaged audience.
- Daytime (9 AM - 4 PM): More affordable and often great for reaching stay-at-home parents or remote workers.
- Early Fringe (4 PM - 7 PM): Catches people as they wind down from work. It’s a valuable and moderately priced slot.
- Late Night (11 PM - 2 AM): The most budget-friendly option, but you're hitting a much smaller, more niche audience.
For a B2B SaaS product, a slot during the early morning news might deliver a much better ROI than a pricey primetime spot sandwiched in a family sitcom. It’s all about mapping the daypart to your customer's daily routine.
Show Popularity and Audience Demand
The next major factor is context—specifically, the show your ad runs alongside. Think of an ad spot as a piece of real estate; its value is determined by the neighborhood. Advertising during a live, must-see event like the Academy Awards or the Super Bowl is the TV equivalent of buying a storefront on Fifth Avenue.
It all boils down to simple supply and demand. A hit show with millions of loyal, live viewers creates a bidding war among advertisers for a very limited number of commercial breaks. That intense demand sends the cost through the roof. In contrast, a little-known show or a rerun has more ad inventory than buyers, which means much lower prices.
Seasonality and Timing
Just like in retail, the ad market has its peak seasons. The fourth quarter (Q4), from October to December, is notoriously expensive because of the holiday shopping frenzy. Every brand is fighting for attention to capture holiday spending, which can inflate ad costs by 30-50%.
Other high-demand periods include:
- Back-to-school season (August-September)
- Major political election cycles
- Big sporting events like the Olympics
On the other hand, months like January and February are often the cheapest time to buy ad space, since consumer spending usually dips after the holidays. For a SaaS company that isn’t tied to seasonal sales, advertising during these off-peak times is a brilliant move to stretch your budget further.
The price you pay for an ad isn't just about the number of viewers; it's about the urgency and competition to reach those viewers at a specific moment in time.
Geographic Location and Market Size
Where your ad runs is just as important as when. In the U.S., the TV market is carved up into 210 Designated Market Areas (DMAs), and the costs swing wildly from one to the next.
Running an ad in New York City (DMA #1) will cost exponentially more than running that same ad in Omaha, Nebraska (DMA #74). The price is directly tethered to the population density and potential audience size of that region. A local primetime spot in a top-10 market like Los Angeles or Chicago can easily cost 3 to 5 times the national average.
This is exactly why so many startups test a new TV campaign in a smaller, more affordable DMA first. It’s a smart, lower-risk way to see what works before going big.
Is Traditional TV a Smart Move for a SaaS Company?
We’ve crunched the numbers, explained the metrics, and broken down the markets. But the real question remains: does any of this actually make sense for a digital product? For most early-stage SaaS companies, the answer is a hard no. The "Agency Drain" of a massive, untargeted national broadcast campaign is a classic trap.
It’s easy to get seduced by the idea of reaching millions at once, but that shotgun approach completely ignores the surgical precision your business was built on. You didn't build a product for everyone; you built it for a specific user with a specific problem. Your marketing needs to mirror that intelligence.
The future isn’t about blanketing the airwaves with expensive, hopeful ads. It’s about surgical, performance-driven video that you can actually measure.
The Shift from Linear TV to Targeted Streaming
The way people watch "television" has fundamentally changed, and your ad strategy has to change with it. The classic image of a family gathered around a single screen to watch a scheduled program is fading into history. Today, viewership is fragmented across dozens of streaming apps, on-demand platforms, and connected devices.
This isn't just a minor trend; it's a seismic shift with huge implications for your budget. While the global television advertising market is still massive, traditional linear TV is on the decline. In the United States, linear TV ad spending is projected to drop by 1.7% in 2026.
In stark contrast, connected TV (CTV) advertising is absolutely surging, with a projected growth of 13.8% for the same year. You can explore the full market analysis on TV advertising trends for a deeper dive.
By summer 2026, streaming is expected to capture over 50% of all U.S. television consumption. This isn't just a data point about viewership; it’s a bright, flashing arrow pointing to where your future customers are spending their time.
Why CTV and Online Video Win for SaaS
For a business that lives and breathes online, the choice becomes obvious. Channels like CTV and programmatic video ads on platforms like YouTube offer the best of both worlds: the high-impact visual of a TV screen combined with the granular targeting and measurement of a digital campaign.
It’s about choosing the right tool for the job. You wouldn't use a hammer to write code, so why use a broadcast-era marketing tool to sell a cutting-edge software product? The logical, ROI-focused choice is a scalable video asset, not a primetime gamble.
A structured video philosophy isn't just an alternative to TV; it's the next logical step. It's about taking the same data-driven approach you use for product development and applying it to your marketing creative.
Take a look at how other companies have approached this with targeted business marketing videos that focus on clarity over broadcast-style fluff.
Instead of paying a premium for a vague, untargeted audience, you can invest in reaching the right people on the platforms they already use every day. This approach respects your budget and, more importantly, it respects your customer. It positions your product as a solution, delivered with the same precision and intelligence that went into building it in the first place.
Here’s a quick strategic breakdown of how these channels stack up for a SaaS business.
Video Advertising Channel Comparison for SaaS
For SaaS founders, the goal isn't just reach; it's efficient reach. The table below compares traditional TV, Connected TV (CTV), and online video ads on the metrics that actually drive growth for a software product.
| Channel | Typical Cost Model | Targeting Capability | Measurability (ROI) | Best For... |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Traditional TV | GRP, Cost Per Spot | Very broad (geography, time slot, program) | Low (difficult to attribute direct sign-ups) | Mass-market consumer brands with huge budgets. |
| Connected TV (CTV) | CPM | High (demographics, interests, location, retargeting) | High (can track conversions and attribute revenue) | SaaS companies scaling up, targeting specific industries or roles. |
| Online Video (e.g., YouTube) | CPV, CPM | Very High (keywords, user behavior, custom audiences) | Very High (direct click-throughs and conversion tracking) | Early-stage SaaS, performance marketing, and niche audiences. |
As you can see, the game has changed. While traditional TV excels at building broad, top-of-funnel awareness, its lack of precise targeting and direct measurement makes it a poor fit for most SaaS companies. CTV and online video, on the other hand, are built for the data-driven world that software startups inhabit, allowing you to connect with the right users and prove your ROI every step of the way.
A Few Common Questions About TV Ad Costs
Even after breaking down production and media buys, a few practical questions always pop up. When you're staring down a big investment like a TV campaign, the details really matter. Here are the straight, no-fluff answers to the questions we hear most often from founders.
What is a realistic starting budget for a small business TV ad campaign?
A realistic starting budget for a local TV campaign is between $5,000 and $20,000 for the first month. This range is key because it must cover both your ad creative and the cost to run it. A lean animated explainer video might cost $2,000 to $5,000, leaving the rest for the media buy, which is enough to ensure your ad is shown frequently enough to make an impact in a small or mid-sized market.
How do I measure the ROI of a TV advertisement?
Measuring TV ad ROI is trickier than digital but entirely possible. The most direct methods for a SaaS business are using a unique, memorable URL (like yoursite.com/tv) or a campaign-specific promo code ("Use code TV25") mentioned in the ad. These allow for direct tracking of traffic and sign-ups. You can also analyze your website analytics for a noticeable "spike" in direct traffic immediately after your ad airs.
Are there cheaper alternatives to traditional TV ads for video marketing?
Yes, and they are often more effective for SaaS companies. Connected TV (CTV) on platforms like Hulu or Roku offers the big-screen experience with digital targeting. YouTube ads allow you to target users based on their search history and viewing habits. Paid social video ads on platforms like LinkedIn let you target specific job titles and industries, which usually delivers a much higher ROI for B2B products.
How long does it take to produce and launch a TV ad campaign?
A realistic timeline from idea to airdate is typically 1 to 3 months. A simple animated ad can be produced in 1-2 weeks, while a live-action commercial can take 6-12 weeks. The media buying process—negotiating rates and securing slots—adds another 2-4 weeks to the timeline after the ad is finalized.
The world of TV advertising is complex, but it's no longer an exclusive club for mega-brands. The real takeaway is that structure and strategy matter more than budget. Instead of chasing the high-production fluff of the "Agency Drain," focus on creating a clear, performance-driven video asset first.
At Forgeclips, we built our entire philosophy around this idea. We help SaaS companies create structured, high-quality product demos and promos without the slow timelines and messy DIY process. If you're ready to create videos that explain your product clearly and drive conversions, we can help. Start creating high-performing videos with Forgeclips today.