The Most Expensive TV Ads cost $700k+, but the Real Cost is Much Higher

For all the talk of television’s demise, TV advertising still works, and marketers know it. Though ad rates have come down a bit in recent years, a new report from Ad Age finds that a top show like NBC’s Sunday Night Football can still fetch nearly $700,000 for a 30-second ad.

But even then, the real cost of reaching viewers is far more expensive. Indeed, it’s one thing to serve TV viewers an ad impression, but another thing entirely to get them to pay attention to the screen while it airs. If advertisers want to make the most of their costly TV ad buys, they need to go beyond ratings and begin making spending decisions based on  Attention metrics that tell them how many people they’re really reaching.

After all, the goal of advertising isn’t to buy as many impressions as possible, it’s to capture viewers’ attention and change their behavior.

How brands can calculate the true cost of TV advertising.

Right now, advertisers are paying for TV ads based on quantity, with no regard to the quality of the impressions they’ve purchased. So a brand might pay $685,227 for an ad to Sunday Night Football’s audience of over 20 million viewers, but it has no insight into how many of those viewers will actually see the ad when it airs.

Certainly, many of the brand’s impressions will be non-viewable, airing after the intended viewer has left the room to grab a drink or make a snack. Others will air while the viewer is in the room, but paying attention to something else (their smartphone, for example). As a result, brands have to pay much more if they want to serve 20 million Viewable ads or reach 20 million Attentive viewers.

At TVision, our computer vision technology allows us to measure Ad Attention and eyes-on-screen Attention for every ad that airs on television. With this information, we’re able to take the price of a marketer’s ad buy and calculate how much money it would cost to reach the same size audience if every impression were served in-view or to an attentive viewer.

When we ran the numbers, we found that the Attention-adjusted cost of a Sunday Night Football ad was over $1 million.

Want to make smarter ad buys? Start incorporating Attention.

We also calculated the performance of every other program in Ad Age’s top 20 most expensive shows. The results offer a perfect example of how brands can use Attention to find undervalued inventory and make smarter, more efficient ad buys.

For instance, CBS’ Young Sheldon was the 11th most expensive show, with a 30-second ad rate of $160,698. But due to the show’s engaged audience and 30-minute format, viewers rarely left the room when it was on. It has the highest rates of  Ad Attention for all of the top 20 more expensive shows.

Conversely, CBS crime show NCIS was the 16th most expensive show on TV at $135,858. But its Ad Attention is below many others, implying an adjusted cost of more than double to $292,356. If advertisers are looking for an engaged audience at an affordable price, they may want to look at other placements on TV.

These are just a few examples of why Attention are crucial metrics for any advertiser who is planning to do business in the high-stakes TV marketplace. While marketers can’t help that TV costs continue to rise, they have all the tools they need to make smart spending decisions and reach engaged viewers.

Want to understand how to get the most out of your brand’s TV investment? Contact us to learn more.