According to the annual Advertising Age survey, NBC’s Sunday Night Football has the highest thirty second advertising spot cost at $434,792. Last year’s champion, Grey’s Anatomy took quite a haircut this year, according to the survey, down to $326,685 per 30 second spot. That’s more than a $100,000 per spot down from last year’s survey, and last year there was a steep Grey’s Anatomy premium versus Desperate Housewives of over $100,000. This year, Grey’s is only about $8,000 more expensive than Housewives‘ $318,552.
CBS’s top show is CSI, at $262,600. Fox’s top show for the fall is Fringe at $343,000, but keep in mind Fringe is airing all season with half the amount of normal commercial spots. House (which airs with the full slate of advertising) is next highest for Fox at $260,179.
CW’s highest-priced show is America’s Next Top Model at $103,714 – well ahead of anything else on the CW (One Tree Hill is next highest at $67,902 and Gossip Girl pulls $62,139 according to the survey). The Game on Friday nights has the lowest price of anything this fall according to the survey at $29,583 – that’s even cheaper than the 8pm Saturday block of Crimetime Saturday reruns on CBS at $32,600.
You can download the full list here (PDF file).
For comparison, here are the numbers from the same Ad Age survey last year.
Update: I just posted a MAGNA report that has some interesting observations about Fringe ad data here.
wow….$29 k…..cw must have been crazy losing Smackdown. CW is really a monday-thursday network. This makes me wonder why they would not have picked up a show like Moonlight. It may cost more that anything they have on Friday Night’s, but at least they may have seen a better return for their $. After seeing the #’s from this past Friday…they might as well sell that space to another company..as they did with sunday.
off the subject…what do we have any ratings info for Elite Xc? or The Ohio State game Saturday night?
Shawn, sadly we have not seen Saturday night’s ratings yet. Sorry…
I think it is quite shocking that and ad during King of the Hill cost twice as much 60 Minutes. I know King of the Hill attracts a younger demographic but still….
Any news on the EliteXC MMA show last night?
Maybe you can make a index with ad price & ratings(include demo),
to analyze which show’ ad is cheapest, and which show is most expensive.
I bet ad men love it.
Still waiting on Saturday night ratings.
I will look at that Ad Age chart and think about it. Reality is that folks in the advertising industry already know much, much more than that chart.
EliteXC averaged 4.3 million viewers and a 1.8/6 among 18-49 year olds
I think ABC should increase the price of ‘EM:HE’, ‘AFV’ and Brothers and Sisters.
and Prison Break is waaaay too high.
Given the dive in ratings, I’m betting some of the agencies that paid 194,000 for an ad during Prison Break or 141,000 for an ad during Terminator are going to be asking for some makegoods. Same for a lot of the other shows that came back lower than expected.
Full Saturday numbers now posted.
So does Fringe have an inflated price since it has less ads? Is the whole “fast forward proof” idea that appealing to advertisers? Or is it partially that they were expecting much better ratings?
Julia, it’s *got* to primarily be the fewer ads/hour. The expectation could not have been that it would have better demo numbers than anything else in the Fox lineup, including House.
I just can’t believe advertisers bought into that idea, at least not at such a big price increase. Especially since it doesn’t seem DVR actually has as big an effect on ratings as everyone wants us to think it does. I mean, Fringe does get the largest DVR audience, but that’s still only about 2 mil extra viewers. If they manage to get all of those 2 mil to watch the commercials (which I don’t believe would happen, since there’s no such thing as commercial free) is that really worth $80,000 more than House?
I’m actually kind of surprised Chuck’s ad rate isn’t higher. Did that show not have good demo numbers last season?
Let me clarify. I can understand why FOX would want to charge more, since they have less product to make up for the cost of the hour, but what I don’t understand is what the benefit to an advertiser is to pay that.
Julia, Fox did research the showed that when fewer commercials aired, more people actually watched the commercials. I don’t have any trouble believing that is true or that advertisers buy into it. DVR #s probably don’t factor in at all. I don’t think it’s reasonable to directly compare it to House because if House was only airing half the commercials the fee would likely be more than Fringe’s — though I doubt it would be significantly more.
Ah, so it’s more about the people who watch live and then don’t change the channel during the commercials. Got it. Though I still wonder if they are getting their money’s worth or if FOX tried to sell it as the next Lost.
I’d guess probably a bit of both. The show had a lot of buzz and while it’s doing well, especially in the demo, I’m sure quite a few advertisers bought into the hype and were expecting better ratings.
Fox is doing this with Dollhouse as well. the best barometer probably doesn’t come until next Fall. If they do it again (either with Fringe or different shows) I think it’s fair to assume both the advertisers and network were happy. I don’t think it will work everywhere, but it might work with a few shows. I doubt they could charged $520,000 for House spots – especially in the 8pm hour –if there were half as many of them, so it’s probably more cost effective to do what they are doing with House.
I think the benefit to the advertiser goes beyond just Nielsen numbers. These companies have to do their own research too. And they’ve made a decision that their prospective sales hinge on targeting not just the demo numbers, but the people within the demographic. I mean, I can watch Heroes or Terminator and I’m seeing the exact same Apple iPhone commercial. Apple knows where it’s customers are.
What FOX has done on top of this is make the argument (less commercial time, more chance people will stick around and not change the channel) that their new strategy will produce more stable TV viewing, and therefore for the advertisers who know where their prospective buyers are, more of a chance the people they’re targeting will see the ad. So what FOX has done is try to insert more certainty into the fairly nebulous realm of TV advertising. Companies like certainty, they like seeing a payoff for their dollars. The risk goes down, they can explain the cost in terms of the value they’re going to get in return.
I think Robert is right though, this will work on select shows. And I think FOX is going to keep it that way for now.
No number for “Lost’ ? Because Lost is not in 07-08 data and not in 08-09 data.
I guess I am an example,anecdotally, of the “less commercials means you’ll watch them more” concept. Tuesday nights are my only non-DVR, watch-it-live nights at this point (altough I still DVR in case the phone rings, yadda yadda). During commercial breaks on House, I’ll go have a snack, jump on the computer, do some laundry, and so on. However, I do not try such things during Fringe because the breaks are shorter, and I don’t want to miss anything!
I think Niersen do have a ad time ratings, as ad time shorter, ad ratings is higher, so maybe FOX’s Fringe ad charge more is based on these rearch.
I know ad men do have much more knowledge about tv ad cost performance.
But we fans still want to know it, so if you can find or make a chart, that would be wonderful.
chinafan, there are indeed commercial ratings, usually referred to as C+3, which measure the actual commerical viewing within 3 days of airtime (including DVR playback).
We’d love to see them, but they aren’t free to the press, they cost real money. So unless anyone wants to send them along, we’ll just keep hoping.
I just posted a MAGNA report with some observations on Fringe ad data here:
http://tvbythenumbers.com/2008/10/06/new-tv-series-performance-and-prognosis/5770
Typical new show with a lot of marketing and a great timeslot (11th hour): 155,000.
Fringe: 348,000.
That’s more than double so the strategy is at least successful for now.
Chuck is canceled. It’s worth less now than last year and is only shedding viewers. Sad.
Heroes takes a huge hit.
Terminator makes good money, but with the ratings as is its not going to sell many more ads at that price.
NBC is less pathetic than popular opinion suggests. Look at SNF and cheap shows with decent ad prices.
Could someone tell me an appx . what an average 30 second would cost if show followed a Fox football game on sunday ? jb