It's always interesting, I think, to consider how much one 30-second television spot costs on prime-time television. Advertising Age published an article today with the cost per spot for the programs listed above. Which program is the most expensive on which to advertise? American Idol. One 30 second spot on American Idol costs more than $400k, and of course one would never just purchase one spot, as repetition is an important part of the advertising game. By the way, the $400K does not include the cost of producing the commercial, which could easily double that figure.
3 comments:
I find the cost of advertising to be very interesting. Companies are paying huge amounts of money for commercial space that may or may not be paid attention to by the consumers. I think that it makes complete sense that the price of advertising depends on the success of the show that the commercial airs during but I realize that TV advertising is very uncertain. Especially now, with the ability to fast forward through commercials, it will be more difficult to tell if the commercial that a company paid so much money for is even reaching large numbers of people. In today's technologically advanced worl, advertisers who are paying the big bucks for commercial space can't rely on the logic that if a show has good ratings than people will watch their commercial that airs during that TV show because of products such as Tivo. When doing assignment 5 last week, I found that paying for expensive commercial space for ad campaigns that consumers have the ability to fast forward through is becoming an issue in advertising. To combat this, some advertisers are turning to stealth advertising by paying for product placements in TV shows.
After seeing how much money and sacrifice goes into airing a 30 second commercial, I almost feel guilty for fast forwarding through them! I usually watch American Idol on my tivo (which allows me to skip all of the commercials) and I never think twice about how much money advertising companies spend in order to show them. From viewing this chart I realized that when I fast forward through Family Guy commercials I am essentially wasting about 260,000! Now that I am relatively aware of how much commercials cost, I may think again before I press fast forward.
I think it is pretty amazing how expensive advertising is these days. To me what this article by Advertising Age proves is the fact that advertising is not always about which advertisement is the best, but it is also largely important how much money that particular company that is advertising has. Personally, I was not surprised about the figures concerning the prices for advertising, but what I was more surprised about was the idea that the making of the commercial usually costs even more to produce than it does to air on television.
Something else that is important to note about this chart published by Advertising Age is that the most expensive advertising slots are in primetime. This is due to the fact that the majority of people watch television between 6 and 10pm. In addition to that, nationally televised events such as TV series on national TV or sporting events such as Sunday or MNF that draw a bigger audience are more expensive slots while also being more difficult to acquire.
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