What primetime TV ads cost in the 2024-25 season

Of the top 10 priciest shows of the 2024-25 broadcast year, NBC and ABC were home to four each, while CBS and Amazon Prime Video each possessed only one. This marks the first year in at least the past decade that Fox has not held a position in Ad Age’s top 10.

Unsurprisingly, the top three most expensive shows in broadcast prime time remain unchanged from last year. A 30-second ad in NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” increased by 14% during this year’s upfront from $882,079 to $1,008,746 on average.

The No. 2 spot again belongs to ABC’s “Monday Night Football,” which began airing more frequently on ABC and ESPN simultaneously during last year’s Hollywood strikes. This year, nearly all “Monday Night Football” games will be simulcast on ABC, and it cost $637,718 to advertise in them, up 13% over last year’s $562,524 rate.

And “Thursday Night Football” returns to the third rank in the top 10. Advertising in Prime Video’s NFL stream costs $562,918, down 3% from last year’s $579,391. The consistency of the top three year-over-year is reflective of the high demand for live sports, one of the few TV spaces in which advertisers can still reach large audiences at one time.

The fourth, fifth and sixth ranks belong to singing competition shows. ABC’s “American Idol” was the highest-priced unscripted series in this year’s prime time slate, at $131,943 on average. On its heels are the Tuesday and Monday night airings of NBC’s “The Voice,” which take the fifth and sixth ranks, respectively. “The Voice’s” Tuesday night airing cost advertisers more for a 30-second unit at $126,426 on average, while a Monday night ad cost $118,115.

In seventh place, CBS’s “Survivor” held the network’s only rank in the top 10, with advertisers paying $95,139 on average per spot.

The only scripted series in this year’s top 10 is NBC’s “Chicago Fire.” The average unit cost in this year’s upfront was $92,666, down 33% from $138,682 in 2022.

Comparisons for some series in this year’s analysis are compared to pricing from 2022 instead of 2023 as last year’s Hollywood strikes pushed many scripted series from fall prime time schedules and increased the presence of sports, unscripted content and reruns last year. At the time of publication for last year’s TV Pricing Chart, Ad Age tracked pricing for networks’ fall slates due to uncertainty for when scripted series would return.

The final two slots in the top 10 belong to ABC; “Dancing with the Stars” claims ninth place at $89,817 per unit, and “The Golden Bachelorette” rounds out the top 10, averaging $86,955 compared to $48,338 for last year’s “The Golden Bachelor.”

Disney, NBCUniversal, Paramount, Fox, The CW, Amazon and Netflix declined to comment on Ad Age’s TV Pricing Chart.

Overall, the largest increase in pricing for broadcast primetime was for ABC’s true crime news program “20/20.” The average 30-second cost grew 31% from $43,957 to $57,755. Prior to this year’s dealmaking, one media buyer told Ad Age that they’d seen increased client demand for David Muir, one of the hosts of “20/20,” as well as “ABC World News Tonight.” The demand was in part due to advertisers seeking alignment with non-opinion news programming as election-related coverage has become increasingly polarizing for consumers.

CBS’s “Blue Bloods” saw the largest growth of any scripted series, with a 30-second spot increasing 12% to $79,185 compared to $70,565 in 2022.

This year’s upfront was less kind to ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy,” the average price for which plummeted 68% from $207,498 in 2022 to $65,922. For scripted shows Ad Age tracked last year, Fox’s animated “Krapopolis” saw the largest dip: the average 30-second spot declined 47% from $63,222 in 2023 to $33,756 this year.

Ad Age's survey is assembled using information from as many as six sources including major media-buying agencies (see our 2023 pricing chart). The resulting prices should be viewed as directional indicators of unit cost and not the actual price that every advertiser paid for a 30-second spot. The numbers are based on agency estimates that can vary depending on the amount of inventory purchased from a network, the inclusion of any nontraditional advertising such as product placements and the relationship that an advertiser and media-buying agency has with a network. Most TV advertising is typically purchased as part of larger negotiations, not on a one-off basis.

These estimates also reflect the prices that advertisers and networks agreed on in this year's upfront marketplace. Prices have likely changed for those buying spots closer to the air date in the so-called “scatter” market that follows.