Annoying TV Adverts - At What Cost?

OK, you are happily watching your favourite TV programme and it’s time for the adverts.

Before you know it, a whole stream of those really annoying adverts come on – again. 10 or 20 or 30 second chunks of segmented television hell.


TV adverts simply aren’t the same these days.  Think of the classics:


Leonard Rossiter, Joan Collins - Cinzano Airliner


Hamlet - Golf - £2.50RRP for 5!!!

Notice the absence of Gimmicks, wall to wall muzac and voice over in these old ads.  All that nonsense replaced with a bit of simple (yet creative) HUMOUR.

Oh well, back to the present. Still, I guess Solace can be taken from the fact that someone somewhere is paying for this oh so regular truckload of TV hell. I wonder:

• How much is paid for that TV advertising slot?
• How much solace can be taken?

I’m talking JUST THE AIRTIME here...
The power of the internet to the rescue. According to Thinkbox:

There are various formulae that you need to know when it comes to buying airtime, as well as an understanding of what all the jargon means.
The equation to calculate cost per thousands is made up of 4 elements: 3 variable measures - money, cpt and ratings and 1 non variable - universe. You will always know the universe of the target audience you are buying, as these are published figures. They do change from month to month though. The network universes do not change much from month to month but the multi-channel universes usually go up a little each month as digital penetration increases. The network universes may change annually as the population profile changes slightly.
If you know 2 out of the 3 variable measures, you will be able to calculate the fourth.

First some jargon busting:

• CPT = Cost Per Thousands.  The cost to place a TV advert to advertise to 1000 people.  According to this site ITV's typical CPT is = £5.69 
• TVRs = Television Ratings.  A TVR is defined as the percentage of a particular audience that has seen a commercial break. Therefore, 10 adult TVRs means 10% of all adults saw the commercial break.
• Universe = a population estimate for a particular audience category.  For example, the network universe for ABC1 Women is the total estimated population of ABC1 Women living within television households in the UK.  All UK adults with televisions = 48 million.

 The Equation is:

Example time.

Firstly, what’s my market penetration going to be?
Well, these annoying adverts seem to go around and around ad-nauseum.  Let’s make sure that all 48m UK adults see my advert at the most 5 times each.  So my TVR is going to be 500 (500% or 5 times the audience)


1.4 million quid.   Nice. 

Still won’t make me watch the adverts.

Where’s the Sky+ remote to fast forward past these buggers... what else is on...?

- Chris