TV commercial cost in Ireland and the UK (2026): what it costs to make and air a 30-second ad

1The two budgets: making the ad and showing it

Making a 30-second commercial costs £3,000 to £10,000 at the simple end, £10,000 to £50,000 mid-range and over £50,000 for high-end work, according to One Day Agency's 2025 guidance. Showing it cost from €1,000 to €19,600 a spot on RTÉ in October 2026, and £3,500 to £35,000 a spot on UK linear TV. One Day suggests at least £100,000 of airtime for a national UK campaign, so for national work the media budget is usually the bigger one.

The split matters when you brief a production company. A quote for the film should never include airtime, and a media plan should never assume a production cost. A simple spot with one location, a small crew and a hired voice-over sits in the bottom band. A film that has to pass a broadcaster's technical checks, with a full crew, cast and a proper grade and mix, lands in the middle or top band. Our commercial production work in Dublin is quoted that way, with the media plan left to the agency or the client's media partner.

The UK airtime figures are agency guidance, because UK broadcasters do not publish programme prices. Thinkbox, the marketing body for UK commercial TV, explains why any single figure is only a guide: airtime is traded on cost per thousand viewers, usually as a discount negotiated off each broadcaster's station average price, and the discount depends on budget, audience, timing and commitment. January is the cheapest month and September to November the dearest. Its figures also show that national campaigns are not the only way in: 598 advertisers spent less than £50,000 on UK TV in 2025, and over 400 spent less than £25,000 (Thinkbox, 2026).

2What crew cost on a UK commercial

Under the Advertising Producers Association's recommended rates, effective 1 September 2026, eight core camera, lighting and direction roles cost up to £6,052 for one basic shooting day, labour only. Add a producer and a sound mixer and the day reaches £7,681. The same eight roles cost £5,876 on the 2025 card, so the maximum rates rose 3.0%.

The APA sets these recommended terms for UK commercials in agreement with the union Bectu. Its day rates already include holiday pay, which the card sets at 12.07% of hours worked, and anyone booked past the 11-hour day moves onto overtime. Crew on a basic rate up to £458 earn 1.5 times their hourly rate for overtime; above £696 the multiplier is 1. A second shoot day doubles the labour line before a camera has been hired, which is why the cheapest production band in section 1 is really a one-day, one-location, small-crew job.

The jump from £10,000 to £50,000 is mostly shoot days and finishing, not higher day rates: more days, a bigger crew, cast, an art department, and a post schedule with edit, sound design and grade. When a brief needs the idea built from scratch rather than shot to an agency script, the concept and creative direction add to that, which is the aligned brand video side of our work.

What the APA card does not cover

The APA rates are for crew engaged on its terms, and the director and producer lines have a maximum but no minimum. Anything agreed outside the card, such as an in-demand director's fee on a national campaign, is negotiated job by job and is not published; we found no source that puts a figure on it. Treat the totals above as the labour cost of a crew working to the card, not a ceiling for the whole shoot.

What about crew rates in Ireland?

We could not find a published rate card for crew on Irish commercials. The 2020 Shooting Crew Agreement between Screen Producers Ireland and SIPTU is written around feature film and high-end TV drama (SPI / SIPTU), so it is no guide to what a commercial shoot costs. Irish commercial crews are booked on negotiated day rates, which is why the production figures on this page are UK figures. If you are budgeting an Irish shoot, ask for a quote that lists crew days, kit and post separately so you can compare it line by line.

3What a 30-second spot costs on RTÉ

RTÉ publishes a price list for single 30-second spots every month. In October 2026 a spot cost €13,000 in The Late Late Show, €10,500 in Fair City, €8,800 in EastEnders, €7,800 in the 9 News and €1,600 in News at One. Champions League football on RTÉ2 was the dearest slot at €19,600.

How the price moves through the year

The same slot can double in price between spring and autumn. The Late Late Show spot rose 86%, from €7,000 in March 2026 to €13,000 in October. Across 2025, Fair City ran from €5,800 in January and August to €12,200 in November. Prices climb from September as the autumn schedule starts, peak in November, and drop sharply in July and August when audiences thin out. A budget agreed in spring for an autumn flight will be bought at autumn prices.

RTÉ's 2026 list prices are lower than 2025

Comparing each 2026 sheet with the same month a year earlier shows a clear drop. The 9 News spot was 20% to 30% cheaper in every month we could compare. Fair City was cheaper in 8 of 9 months, by up to 16%, and The Late Late Show was cheaper in all 6 months it aired in both years. RTÉ does not explain the changes in its price sheets, so we have not guessed at a reason. Bear in mind that these are list prices for one-off spot buys; they say nothing about the discounts an agency negotiates on a full-year deal.

What the published price includes

The prices apply only to advertisers with a Run of Day deal with RTÉ, and the advertiser's contracted discount is then applied. They are for a centre break; first or last in the break costs 30% more, and alcohol brands pay a further 25%. RTÉ also gives a 5% discount to supermarket, cable, satellite and telecoms brands that book October to December eight weeks ahead. Other lengths are priced off the 30-second rate: a 10-second ad costs 50% of it, a 20-second ad 80% and a 60-second ad 200% (RTÉ rate card 2026).

Most RTÉ airtime is not bought spot by spot but by audience. The 2026 rate card's fixed price for a thousand adult viewers runs from €7.25 in August to €15.35 in November, rising to €17.65 that month for supermarkets, cable, satellite and telecoms brands. Virgin Media Television publishes planning prices on the same per-thousand basis (Virgin Media Television, 2024), but not programme-by-programme spot prices. We found no UK broadcaster that publishes either, which makes RTÉ's monthly sheets the most detailed public airtime prices we found for either market. When the budget is fixed, as it usually is for the charities and public bodies behind social impact campaigns, the same money buys more spots in spring or summer than in November.

4Streaming and connected TV: the smaller entry ticket

Streaming and connected TV are bought per thousand impressions rather than per spot. RTÉ Player's 30-second ad costs €87 per thousand from January to August 2026, €135 in September and October and €145 in November and December. One Day Agency's 2025 guidance puts UK video-on-demand at £30 to £150 per thousand.

The arithmetic explains why smaller budgets start here. At £30 per thousand, £3,000 buys 100,000 UK impressions; at £150 per thousand it buys 20,000. The same £3,000 would not buy one peak-time spot on UK linear TV. What streaming does not offer is cheaper reach. A thousand adult viewers on RTÉ's linear fixed-price card cost €8.44 in January 2026; a thousand RTÉ Player impressions cost €87. The two are measured differently, so this is not a like-for-like comparison, but the gap shows what the higher price pays for: targeting, and the ability to start small.

Buying linear TV is getting closer to buying online. In June 2026 ITV Media, Channel 4 Sales and Sky Media launched Universal Ads, a self-service platform for UK TV airtime aimed at smaller advertisers (Ofcom Media Nations 2026). The creative still has to work on both. A spot built for a broadcast break has to land in the first few seconds; a streaming ad can carry the same 30 seconds with a different cut and a call to action. We plan the cutdowns and social edits at the script stage so they come from the same shoot.

Two caveats on the UK connected TV figures. eMarketer's £2.20bn is a forecast made in November 2024, and its definition includes broadcaster on-demand services, YouTube on TV sets and addressable linear TV, so it overlaps with the AA/WARC figures below. Ofcom's £1.84bn is a measured 2025 figure for a narrower group: subscription and ad-funded streamers, YouTube and free ad-supported channels.

5The UK market behind the prices

UK advertisers spent £5,216.1 million on TV in 2025, down 1.2%, while addressable TV grew 37.0% to £1,839.0 million, according to the AA/WARC Expenditure Report of April 2026. TV took 11.2% of the £46.7 billion spent on UK advertising. AA/WARC's July 2026 update forecasts TV growth of 3.7% in 2026.

Three bodies measure the UK TV market and their totals differ for good reasons. AA/WARC reports gross advertising spend, including sponsorship and addressable formats, which gives £5.2bn for 2025. Ofcom reports the net revenue commercial broadcasters received, mostly from advertising, which was £4.83bn. WPP Media sizes the market by media-owner revenue and gets £4.595bn. Quote one and say which, or a reader comparing pages will think one of them is wrong.

Inside the total, money is moving from fixed spots to targeted inventory. Ofcom found linear advertising revenue fell 10% in 2025 while broadcaster on-demand grew 9% to 29% of broadcaster ad revenue. The audience is still large: people in the UK watched 4 hours 23 minutes of video a day at home in 2025, and 70% watched broadcaster TV each week, down from 73% in 2024. That shrinking but still mass audience is what keeps prime-time spots expensive, and it is why the Irish prices in section 3 rise so sharply when the autumn schedule arrives. You can see how we deliver for both kinds of buy in our work.