How Much to Shoot a TV Commercial?
Whether it be on the local, national or international scale, television advertising can be an effective means of getting the word out about your product or service. Depending on the personnel and visual effects involved, the costs of shooting commercials can vary on a broad scale. The shooting costs for some commercials can be negligible, while others can be as expensive as feature-length movies.
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Production vs. Air Time
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Television commercial costs come under two basic categories: production and air time. The "shooting" of the commercial falls under the category of production, while air time is whatever it costs to put the commercial on television. While the costs of air time can vary according to when you air your commercial and what network you air it on, production comes as a fixed cost. However, it makes little sense to spend next to nothing on production if you plan on paying large amounts to air your commercial to a very broad audience.
Advertising Firms
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Advertising firms all over the country provide scripting, casting and shooting for television commercials. Such firms come in all sizes, from national companies to local entrepreneurs. The advent of digital video and improved video editing technologies has opened the door for small, local firms to carve their own niches into the market. Many of these small firms are offering affordable filming packages at a small fraction of what such services used to cost. According to Entrepreneur Magazine, one such local firm charged a restaurant $5,000 to shoot a commercial that "would have run around $200,000 several years ago."
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Free Advertising
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Many local television stations offer free production if you agree to run your commercial on their network a certain number of times (and pay for that air time). This can prove to be a very cost-effective way of getting your message out to the public, but it may come at an unintended price. According to Gaebler.com, local television stations that offer to produce your commercials for you will often do so at a very low quality level for the sake of saving money on their end. If your commercial ends up being obviously low-budget, it may convey the impression that your company is unsuccessful and cuts corners.
Affordable Alternatives
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As Internet connections become faster and as people spend more and more of their time using the Internet, it is encroaching on all the older types of media, from print media to radio and even television. For this reason, some businesses turn to Internet video advertisement as an alternative to what they see as overpriced television spots. Instead of paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce high-end television commercials, it may be in your best interest to opt for an Internet video advertisement -- possibly an animated one -- that could cost less than $1,000 to produce.
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