How Much Does a TV Advert Cost in the UK?
How much does a 30-second TV advert cost?
On ITV1 a 30-second advert costs about £14.32 for every 1,000 adults who see it (average market price, January to August 2026). That works out at roughly £1,430 to reach 100,000 adults and £14,320 to reach a million. There is no fixed price per slot: you pay for the audience the advert reaches.
| Adults reached | 10-second | 30-second | 60-second |
|---|---|---|---|
| 100,000 adults | £720 | £1,430 | £2,860 |
| 500,000 adults | £3,580 | £7,160 | £14,320 |
| 1,000,000 adults | £7,160 | £14,320 | £28,640 |
| 5,000,000 adults | £35,800 | £71,600 | £143,200 |
Average ITV1 adult prices, before any negotiated discount. Narrower audiences (ABC1, Men 16-34) cost more per thousand. Production is a separate cost. Ask for a costed plan for your budget.
What UK advertisers actually spend on TV
TV has a reputation as a million-pound medium. The trading data says otherwise. In 2025:
- 598advertisers spent less than £50,000 on TV across the whole year
- more than 400spent less than £25,000
- more than 200spent less than £10,000
- 984brands advertised on TV for the first time, up 6% year on year
Source: Thinkbox, cost of TV advertising. Figures are total annual spend per advertiser, not campaign minimums.
The useful question is not whether you can afford TV. It is what a given budget can realistically buy in reach and frequency against the people you actually need, and whether that is enough to move anything.
How TV airtime is priced
UK TV is traded on CPT - the cost of buying 1,000 impacts against a defined target audience. You are not buying a slot at a listed price; you are buying delivery against an audience, and the price moves with what else is competing for that audience.
The four things that set your price
- Which audience you buy. A broad adult audience is cheaper per thousand than a narrow, in-demand one. Buying a tight demographic costs more per thousand and usually delivers fewer of them.
- When you buy it. Demand is seasonal. The same audience on the same channel costs materially more in the run-up to Christmas than in high summer.
- Spot length. A 30-second ad is the standard trading unit, priced at a factor of 1.00. A 10-second ad costs roughly half; a 60-second ad roughly double.
- Region and channel mix. A single ITV macro region costs a fraction of a national buy. Peak inventory on the biggest channels carries the highest CPT; daytime, smaller channels and BVOD carry less.
Because all four move at once, two campaigns with identical budgets can deliver wildly different results. That is the part worth scrutinising before you sign anything - not the headline price.
What the evidence says TV returns
The most robust UK dataset on this is Profit Ability 2, run for Thinkbox by Ebiquity, EssenceMediacom, Gain Theory, Mindshare and Wavemaker UK. It modelled 141 brands, £1.8bn of media spend, 10 channels and 14 sectors, 2021-2023 data.
Linear TV and BVOD together accounted for 54.7% of all advertising-generated profit in the study, with linear TV alone at 46.6%.
Source: Profit Ability 2, Thinkbox. These are cross-category averages from modelled econometrics, not a forecast for any individual brand. Your own return depends on category, creative, budget and how well the campaign is planned - which is exactly why it is worth modelling before you commit rather than after.
What one 30-second TV advert slot costs: ITV daytime vs peak
Sales houses do not publish a price per slot, because you pay for the audience a break delivers. But you can work one out: multiply the people watching the break by the CPT. Using ITV1’s average Adults CPT of £14.32 (January to August 2026), here is roughly what a single 30-second spot works out at.
| Where the 30″ spot runs | Adults watching the break (typical) | Approx. cost of one 30″ spot |
|---|---|---|
| Smaller digital channel, daytime | 20,000 – 50,000 | £290 – £720 |
| ITV1, one region, daytime | 30,000 – 80,000 | £430 – £1,150 |
| ITV1, one region, peak | 250,000 – 500,000 | £3,600 – £7,200 |
| ITV1 national, daytime | 300,000 – 600,000 | £4,300 – £8,600 |
| ITV1 national, peak (soaps, big entertainment) | 2 – 4 million | £28,600 – £57,300 |
| ITV1 national, major live event | 8 million + | £115,000 + |
Illustrative only, before any negotiated discount. Every row uses ITV1’s average adult CPT: peak usually trades above that average and daytime below it, and smaller channels are normally cheaper per thousand, so treat the digital-channel row as a ceiling. 10-second spots cost roughly half, 60-second spots roughly double.
Nobody buys a single spot. A first campaign is a schedule of spots over two to four weeks, so the budget question is how many of these you need to reach your audience more than once. For the channel detail, see how much it costs to advertise on ITV and ITV1 costs by region.
A UK TV advert is not priced per spot: airtime is traded on cost per thousand impacts (CPT), so what you pay is the audience you buy multiplied by the CPT for that audience. On TheHub market price data, ITV1’s average market CPT for Adults across January to August 2026 was £14.32, which means 1,000,000 adult impacts on ITV1 in a 30-second slot cost roughly £14,320 at average market price. That is a market average, not a rate card; what an advertiser actually pays is usually less, and the same money buys very different amounts of audience depending on who you target, when and where.
What you actually pay for
An impact is one person in your target audience watching one of your ads once. Sales houses sell you a volume of impacts against a buying audience (Adults, ABC1 Adults, Housewives with children, Men 16-34 and so on), measured by BARB. The price is expressed as a CPT, and the deal you strike is usually a discount against the sales house’s station average price for that audience and month.
That is why “how much is one ad in Coronation Street?” is the wrong question. A spot in a big programme costs more because it delivers more impacts, not because the programme has a premium price tag. Two advertisers can run in the same break and pay very different sums depending on their audience, their deal and whether the spot was bought fixed or pre-emptible.
You will also see ratings expressed as TVRs. One TVR is 1% of the target audience; impacts are just TVRs converted into people. Planners talk in TVRs, buyers settle money in impacts and CPT. If any of these terms are new, our TV media buying glossary covers them in plain English.
The live numbers behind this page sit in our ITV1 CPT index, which tracks average market CPTs by audience for 2025 against 2026. Start there if you want to see how prices have moved this year. For the ITV-specific picture, including ITVX, see ITV advertising costs.
Worked examples: what a TV campaign costs
These are illustrative sums built from TheHub average market CPTs for ITV1, January to August 2026. They show the mechanics, not a quote. Real deals are usually below the market average, and a real schedule spreads across channels, dayparts and weeks.
Starting point: 1,000,000 adult impacts on ITV1
At the Adults average market CPT of £14.32, one million adult impacts at 30 seconds works out at about £14,320. For context, the same audience averaged £11.97 in 2025, so ITV1 Adults inflation has been +19.6% year on year on this measure.
Changing the spot length
Airtime is priced against a 30-second base, then scaled with spot-length factors. The factors vary by sales house, but structurally a 10″ is roughly 0.5 of a 30″ and a 60″ roughly 2.0.
| Spot length | Approx. factor | 1,000,000 ITV1 adult impacts (illustrative) |
|---|---|---|
| 10″ | ≈ 0.5 | about £7,160 |
| 30″ | 1.00 | about £14,320 |
| 60″ | ≈ 2.0 | about £28,640 |
A 10″ is not half the price for half the job. It is a reminder format; it rarely carries a new proposition or a phone number on its own. Most first-time advertisers should build the plan around a 30″ and use shorter cut-downs to add frequency once the main message is established.
Changing the audience
Narrower audiences cost more per thousand because there are fewer of them and more advertisers want them. On the same TheHub January to August 2026 data:
| ITV1 buying audience | Average market CPT | Change vs 2025 | What about £14,320 buys (illustrative) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adults | £14.32 | +19.6% | about 1,000,000 impacts |
| ABC1 Adults | £35.18 | +13.4% | about 407,000 impacts |
| Housewives with children | £245.03 | +27.4% | about 58,000 impacts |
| Men 16-34 | £636.70 | +4.5% | about 22,500 impacts |
Read that table carefully. Buying on ABC1 Adults does not mean you stop reaching everyone else: the spots still reach all adults, you are just paying for the ABC1 portion. The right buying audience is the one that matches who actually buys from you, not the most flattering one. Our page on ITV1 audience costs lists the CPT for every trading audience.
What moves the price of TV airtime
Month and seasonality
Demand for airtime swings through the year while the supply of viewers moves differently, so the same audience can cost markedly more in a busy month than a quiet one. The run-up to Christmas is the obvious pressure point, and the post-Christmas period tends to ease. If your product sells all year, moving weight out of peak months is one of the cheapest efficiencies available. See TV advertising seasonality for how the months compare.
Audience
Covered above: the smaller and more contested the audience, the higher the CPT. Audience prices also move for their own reasons. On TheHub data, ITV1’s Men 16-34 CPT fell about 37% year on year in June and July 2026 during the World Cup (from £674 to £426 in June and £725 to £455 in July), because big football audiences added supply of exactly the viewers that audience is hard to find. Events can make a normally expensive audience a bargain for a few weeks.
Region
You can buy ITV1 regionally, and regional CPTs are not simply national prices cut into slices; some regions are relatively dear, others good value. Regional buying is how most smaller advertisers get on television at all. Our ITV1 Adults CPT by region page shows the differences for 2026.
Daypart and programme
Peak time carries the biggest audiences and the strongest demand. Daytime and late night are cheaper per thousand but reach a different, often narrower, mix of viewers. A cheap spot in the wrong break is still wasted money; a daytime-heavy schedule can be excellent for response advertisers whose buyers are at home, and poor for a brand that needs young working adults.
Spot length and position
Length follows the factors above. Position matters too: first-in-break or last-in-break, and fixed spots guaranteed to run in a named programme, usually cost a premium over pre-emptible spots, which can be moved or bumped by higher-paying advertisers.
Demand and deal terms
Share deals, audience deals, volume commitments and when you book all move your net CPT. Late money can be cheap when a sales house has inventory to shift, and expensive when the market is tight. This is where a buyer earns their fee; our TV airtime buying guide explains the negotiation side.
Linear TV vs BVOD: a different cost basis
Linear TV is sold in impacts and CPT against BARB audiences. BVOD (ITVX, Channel 4’s streaming service, and the other broadcaster players) is sold in impressions and CPM: cost per thousand ads served, usually with targeting layered on and a frequency cap set per campaign.
The two numbers look similar and are not the same thing. A BVOD CPM is a cost per thousand ads delivered to a device or household, often non-skippable and fully viewed; a linear CPT is a cost per thousand people in a target audience watching. Targeting on BVOD adds cost, and heavy targeting can push the effective price well above linear for the same people. Compare on reach and cost per reached target viewer, not on headline CPT versus CPM. The BVOD advertising page goes into caps, targeting and reporting.
Production costs: what drives them
Media is only half the bill. We will not quote production figures here because the range is enormous, but the drivers are predictable:
- Shoot days and locations. Each extra day or location adds crew, kit and logistics.
- Talent. Actors, voiceover and any recognisable face, plus usage fees tied to how long and where the ad runs.
- Music. Library music is cheap; licensed tracks can outweigh the rest of the production.
- Animation and post-production. Motion graphics, grading and sound design scale with ambition.
- Versions. Cut-downs, regional end frames, BVOD versions and different offers all need editing and separate clearance.
- Clearance and delivery. Every ad needs clearance before broadcast, usually through Clearcast, and claims need substantiation. Allow time as well as money.
The common mistake is to spend most of the budget on the film and leave too little to air it. A good ad with no weight behind it is seen by nobody.
How much budget do you need for a first TV campaign?
Less than most people assume to get on air, more than most people assume to do it properly. Thinkbox reported that in 2025, 598 advertisers spent under £50k on TV in the year, more than 400 spent under £25k and more than 200 spent under £10k, with 984 new TV advertisers (+6% year on year). Small-budget TV is a real, sizeable part of the market.
The useful question is not “how cheap can TV be?” but “what spend gives this campaign a fair chance to work?” We size a first campaign in this order:
- Set the job. A proposition test, a regional launch and national fame need different weight. A test should test one thing.
- Pick the audience and geography. A single ITV region or a targeted BVOD plan can prove the idea before you go national.
- Decide the weight. Enough impacts, over enough weeks, that your target sees the ad more than once or twice. Thin weight spread over many weeks is the classic way to waste a first budget.
- Price it. Impacts multiplied by a realistic net CPT, using the approach in the worked examples above.
- Add production, clearance and measurement. Then check the total against what a win would be worth.
For the evidence that it pays back: Thinkbox’s Profit Ability 2 study (141 brands, £1.8bn of spend, 2021 to 2023) found all advertising returned £1.87 short-term and £4.11 in full profit per £1, with linear TV’s full profit ROI at £5.94 per £1, and linear TV plus BVOD accounting for 54.7% of ad-generated profit. Those are averages across established brands, not a promise for a first test, but they explain why advertisers keep coming back. If you are at the start, read TV advertising for small business and our notes on TV launch campaign planning.
Why the cheapest airtime is not the best value
Low CPT is easy to buy: pack a schedule with late-night and low-rating spots on minor channels and the average price looks superb. The problem is that those impacts pile up on the same small group of heavy viewers, reach stalls, and the people you needed never see the ad.
We judge value on cost per reached target viewer, on the quality of the breaks, and, for response advertisers, on cost per call, visit or sale. A schedule with a higher CPT and better reach will often outperform a cheaper one. When we audit plans, the savings rarely come from finding a lower price; they come from not buying the wrong audience, the wrong months and too little weight.
Send us the plan or proposal you have been given and we will tell you what we would change. Get in touch with the buying team.
Common questions
How much does TV advertising cost in the UK?
There is no single rate card price. Airtime is traded on a cost per thousand basis, so what you pay depends on the audience you are buying, how much demand there is for that audience in that month, the channel mix, the region and the length of your ad. As a guide to what advertisers actually commit, Thinkbox reports that in 2025 598 advertisers spent less than £50,000 on TV across the year, more than 400 spent less than £25,000 and more than 200 spent less than £10,000.
What is the minimum realistic budget for a UK TV campaign?
Lower than most advertisers assume. More than 200 brands spent under £10,000 on TV in 2025. A small budget buys a narrower audience, a tighter region or a shorter burst rather than no campaign at all - the question is whether that delivers enough frequency against the right people to be worth doing, which is what a plan should tell you before you commit.
How is TV airtime actually priced?
On CPT, the cost of buying 1,000 impacts against your target audience. A 30-second ad is the standard trading unit at a factor of 1.00; a 10-second ad costs roughly half and a 60-second ad roughly double. Price moves with demand, so the same audience costs more in Q4 than in high summer.
Does TV advertising actually pay back?
The most robust UK evidence is Profit Ability 2, run for Thinkbox by Ebiquity, EssenceMediacom, Gain Theory, Mindshare and Wavemaker UK across 141 brands and £1.8bn of media spend. It found advertising overall returned £1.87 of profit per £1 in the short term and £4.11 once sustained effects are counted. Linear TV specifically returned £5.94 per £1 on the full measure, and linear TV and BVOD together accounted for 54.7% of all advertising-generated profit.
What is the CPT for ITV1?
Across January to August 2026 the average ITV1 cost per thousand was £14.31 against an Adults audience, £35.13 against ABC1 Adults, £244.39 against Housewives with Children and £635.47 against Men 16-34. All four are up on the same months in 2025 - Adults by 19.5%, ABC1 Adults by 13.2%, Housewives with Children by 27.1% and Men 16-34 by 4.3%. The rise has stalled since: August 2026 came in below August 2025 for Adults and ABC1 Adults. These are average market prices across all dayparts; what you pay depends on the airtime you actually buy and is usually less.
Why does a narrower audience cost so much more?
Because you are paying for a thousand of those specific people, and a smaller pool is harder to reach. On ITV1 in 2026, ABC1 Adults cost about 2.5 times a broad Adults audience per thousand, Housewives with Children about 17 times, and Men 16-34 about 45 times. Young men barely watch linear TV and the price reflects that scarcity. Tightening the target audience is the single most expensive decision on a TV plan, and often an unnecessary one.
When is the cheapest time to reach young men on TV?
Around a major summer tournament. On ITV1 the Men 16-34 CPT fell 37% year on year in both June and July 2026 - from £674 to £426 in June and £725 to £455 in July - while every other audience rose. A tournament floods the market with exactly the audience that is otherwise hardest and dearest to buy, so the price per thousand collapses. Outside those windows, November and December are typically the softest months for that audience.
Is cheap airtime good value?
Not on its own. A low CPT that delivers the wrong audience, at the wrong time of day, at too low a frequency, is expensive. Judge a proposal on delivered impacts against your actual target, the shape of that delivery across the campaign, and the programme environment - not the headline price.
Get a second opinion before you commit the budget
Send us the proposal you have been given, or tell us what you are trying to do. We will tell you what the plan actually delivers, where the value is being lost and whether the price stacks up. No obligation, and no pitch deck.