Gaming Advertising

To produce a TV commercial, costs vary from around £20k for a simple 30 second TV commercial to £300k or more for adverts with bigger costs, multiple locations, well-known faces and soundtracks or advanced visual effects.

To make your budget work harder, creating a suite of TV ads at the same time will always work out more cost effective – not to mention ensuring a strong cohesive campaign for the months, year or even years ahead.

Bigger budgets generally open up more creative possibilities and higher levels of production quality. But brands can create highly effective advertising at any price point.

No matter what your budget is, TV advertising is proven to be one of the most cost-effective ways of growing your brand, with the biggest reach of any media channel.

Media is usually the biggest cost associated with TV advertising. A rule of thumb some advertisers use is the 80/20 split – where 80% of their overall budget is spent on media and 20% on production.

However, this is quite a traditional approach and many brands now spend much more of their budget on production. This is because higher quality adverts are more likely to get shared on social media, essentially earning free media impressions.

At Happy Hour, we work with media agencies to get the most value from your media budget - and we’d be very happy to make an introduction if you don’t have a media agency already.

To factor in all costs for a TV advertising campaign, you need to allow for your media spend and the cost of creating and producing your commercials.

We'd also recommend allowing additional budget to re-edit your TV commercial to create additional assets such as social media content, digital ads and digital OOH. Using variations of the same content across multiple channels is a good way to get more value for money. Developing an integrated campaign also gets your brand seen by more people in more places.

Depending on the talent used in your ad, you may also need to factor in ongoing usage costs too, all of which will of course be discussed and agreed upfront.

The three most important factors to consider when selecting a TV advertising agency are quality, experience and cultural fit.

Quality may be in the eye of the beholder, but successful agencies will back up their showreels with proof of effectiveness. The easiest way to spot a good agency is one whose clients stay with them for a long time.  

Experience is hugely important as TV advertising requires more specialist knowledge, skillsets and equipment than other forms of marketing.  

Cultural fit can be hard to quantify but is often the most important factor. Creating a TV advert is a significant investment – and is more likely to succeed if you’re working with like-minded, passionate and capable people.