Cinema advertising cost
The only channel on this list with no self-serve price at all.
You cannot fund a cinemacampaign here today. No buying rail has reached spend-tested or report-verified on the platform’s own evidence ledger, so live spend runs inside a design-partner engagement rather than from a self-serve top-up. Everything on this page is what a plan would carry, and the whole loop runs in a sandbox that needs no credentials. All 25 rails, graded.
What we enforce, and what the market asks
They measure different things and both apply. One stops a pointless line surviving into a plan; the other stops a pointless campaign reaching air.
Enforced when the plan is built. A line that cannot clear this is dropped and its budget redistributed across the lines that can, with a note saying so. Manual plans are validated against the same number.
Quote-based. No published self-serve minimum exists; packaged regional bursts are the usual entry point.
What other sellers ask for. Not a commitment by anyone, dated because these move, and sourced at the foot of this page.
How this channel is actually priced
Per admission or per screen-week against a selected venue and film package, quoted rather than auctioned. Price moves with the certificate and the release: a package against a major opening weekend costs a multiple of the same venues in a quiet week.
The smallest buy worth making
A two-week regional burst against a defined venue list. Cinema is bought in bursts because a single week rarely accumulates enough admissions in one catchment to register, and the flight default here is two weeks for that reason.
What else leaves your account
Everyone quotes a headline rate. Almost nobody publishes the data uplift, the production spec and the clearance lead time that sit beside it, which is where a budget actually goes wrong.
Print and delivery
A Digital Cinema Package at 2K flat, 24fps, 5.1 audio, sixty seconds maximum, routed for distribution. This is a real production cost and it is not the same as a broadcast master.
Clearance
Cinema has its own clearance body and its own age rating, separate from broadcast. Strong language restricts pairing to 15 and 18 certificates, which changes the audience you can reach.
The platform fee
10% of media, or 5% plus £749 a month above £25,000 of trailing 30-day spend.
The lead time. Around eighteen days from brief to on-screen once clearance is in the path, which makes cinema impossible to bolt onto a campaign late.
Below about £10,000 a month in total media, this is the wrong product. A 10% fee on £2,000 is £200 against the buyer who needs the most support from us, and a multi-channel plan at that budget is too thin to pace on any line and far too thin to power a causal test. Buy search and social directly, and come back when there is a second channel worth funding.
What the rest of the plan costs
- CTV£140 per week
- Addressable TV£1,000 per line
- Audio£250 per line
- DOOH£100 per line
- Paid search£100 per line
- Paid social£250 per line
Where the market figures come from
Desk research dated 3 August 2026. Rates move.
45 minutes. Bring a real brief and we compile it live. Bring a real budget and watch it split across seven channels against these floors — including the lines it cannot carry, which get dropped in front of you.
Talk it throughBring a budget. We will tell you if it is too small.
45 minutes. Bring a real brief and we compile it live.
Book a working session45 minutes. Bring a real brief and we compile it live.
Questions about cinema cost
Why can I not just buy cinema online?
Because no UK cinema seller offers it, and the reason is structural rather than technological: cinema inventory is packaged against films whose performance is unknown until they open, so it is sold as a negotiated package rather than as auctioned impressions. AdBuyMCP automates the paperwork — the brief, the audience packs, the clearance step and the order state machine — which is a genuine saving in effort and is not the same thing as self-serve.
Is cinema worth it at a small budget?
For a launch, often yes; for ongoing performance, usually not. It is a small and volatile market — around £220m in the UK in 2025 — with an attention profile nothing else on this list matches, which makes it a good launch instrument and a poor recurring-spend one. It also scores 40 out of 100 on audience fidelity here, the lowest of the seven, because a cinema buy is a projection from catchment demographics onto a venue.