CTV advertising cost
The channel where minimums fell fastest, and where the data costs more than people expect.
You cannot fund a CTVcampaign 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.
Around $50 a day at the low end, with some platforms carrying no campaign minimum and others setting programme minimums of $10,000 to $25,000. Observed CPMs of roughly $15 to $30.
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
A CPM, set at auction rather than from a rate card, so the figure on a plan is a forecast rather than a price. What moves it: how narrow the audience is, how much competition there is for the same households, and whether you are buying premium streaming inventory or the long tail. A tightly targeted B2B buy in London will clear well above a broad national one.
The smallest buy worth making
At the £140 weekly floor you are buying a few thousand impressions against a narrow audience, which is enough to check that trafficking and creative work end to end and not enough to learn anything about performance. A four-week flight at £1,000 to £2,000 a week is the smallest buy from which a reach and frequency figure means anything, and a powered lift test needs considerably more than that.
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.
Data segment uplift
Roughly £2.50 per thousand on Bombora intent topics and £3.00 on Dun & Bradstreet segments. It appears on the plan before you approve it rather than in the reconciliation afterwards.
Creative
A CTV creative is a mezzanine file plus its trafficking metadata. If you are producing rather than reusing, AI video generation here runs from £6 for ten seconds standard to £15.60 premium, charged separately from the media.
The platform fee
10% of the media, or 5% plus £749 a month above £25,000 of trailing thirty-day spend.
That the data can cost a fifth of the media again. A £15 CPM with a £3 segment uplift is an £18 CPM, and platforms that quote you the first number and invoice the second are relying on you not to check.
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
- Addressable TV£1,000 per line
- Audio£250 per line
- DOOH£100 per line
- Cinema£500 per week
- 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 CTV cost
What is a realistic CTV budget to start with in the UK?
Around £4,000 to £8,000 over a four-week flight if you want a reach and frequency figure worth reading. The £140 weekly floor exists so a line too small to buy properly is dropped with a note and its budget redistributed, rather than placed as a token, and not because £140 a week is a sensible campaign. Below roughly £1,000 a week the delivery is too thin to pace properly and far too thin to support any causal claim.
Why is the CPM higher for a business audience?
Two reasons compound. The audience is a small fraction of streaming households, so you are competing for a narrow slice of inventory, and the segments that identify it are licensed data that carries its own cost — around £2.50 to £3.00 per thousand impressions. Both show on the plan before approval.