CTV Advertising Costs
CTV Advertising Cost: What Your Monthly Budget Actually Buys
CTV advertising has two main costs. The first is media: the ad time itself, priced by CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions), which runs $25–$60 on premium streaming services. The second is making the ad, which traditionally costs $15K–$80K per spot before your campaign even starts.
By Timothy Lalonde · Updated September 2026 · CTV Advertising Costs
Quick answer
CTV advertising has two costs: media, priced at $25–$60 CPM on premium streaming inventory, and production, which traditionally runs $15K–$80K per spot. Managed programs typically require $10K/month in media. Screenbridge Reach folds ad creation into the media buy, so the monthly tier is the total: Test at $10K, Learn at $25K, Scale at $50K+.
Key takeaways
- Premium streaming CPMs in the US run $25–$60. A CPM under ~$15 usually signals long-tail, low-attention apps.
- Traditional TV production is $15K–$80K per spot; open-market UGC-to-TV editing runs $5K–$20K; Screenbridge Reach includes it at $0 upfront.
- At a $25K/mo media budget you can expect roughly 415K–1M impressions per month on premium services like Hulu, Paramount+ and Tubi.
- Managed CTV services usually start at $10K to $50K/month in media. Screenbridge Reach has no minimum, and includes the creative from $10K/month.
On this page
If you're trying to understand CTV advertising cost, start with the split that matters: media cost and production cost.
Screenbridge Reach removes that second cost. Our post-production team turns your existing UGC and social videos into TV-quality ads, included in the price. So your monthly tier is the total cost: Test at $10K, Learn at $25K, Scale at $50K+.
This page covers the full math: CPM benchmarks, the one formula that decodes any quote, what each budget level buys, and the mistakes that quietly make CTV more expensive than it should be.
CTV CPM: The Only Formula You Need
CTV is priced by CPM: what you pay for every 1,000 times your ad is shown. To figure out how many impressions any budget buys:
Impressions = (media budget ÷ CPM) × 1,000
Premium streaming inventory in the US runs between $25 and $60 CPM, based on our media-planning benchmarks. Where you land in that range depends on when and where your ads run:
- Top of the range: evening primetime and live sports (the most viewers, and the most advertisers bidding for them).
- Middle: premium entertainment content across services like Hulu, Paramount+, Peacock, and Tubi.
- Bottom (and below): daytime slots and ad-supported long-tail apps. Be careful here: a very cheap CPM often means apps nobody really watches.
When you get a quote from any provider, ask two questions. First: how much of the price actually buys ad time? Some of any managed price covers the service. Ask for the split so you can run the formula above. Second: which apps and channels will my ad run on? Paying $40 per thousand viewers who are paying attention beats paying $12 per thousand who aren't.
The Other Cost: Making the Ad
Media math gets all the attention, but production is where CTV budgets traditionally die.
- A traditional TV commercial (shoot, crew, studio, agency) runs $15K–$80K per spot.
- The budget route (repurposing UGC through outside post-production) typically runs $5K–$20K per spot, with uneven quality.
- With Screenbridge Reach: $0 upfront. Our editors rebuild your existing UGC and social ads into broadcast-quality spots as part of the media buy.
The full process is in how we turn UGC into TV ads. That difference compounds: because ad creation is included, testing three versions costs the same as testing one.
What $10K, $25K, and $50K+ per Month Buys
| Test: $10K/mo | Learn: $25K/mo | Scale: $50K+/mo | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Built for | Finding out if CTV works for your brand | Testing audiences and ad versions | Making CTV a core sales channel |
| Est. impressions/mo | ~165K–400K | ~415K–1M | ~830K–2M+ |
| Ad creation | Included, made from your UGC and social video | Included, with new versions as you learn | Included, refreshed monthly |
| Where ads run | Hulu, Paramount+, Tubi and more via Magnite; Peacock by arrangement | Same services | Same services |
| Time to launch | ~2 weeks | ~2 weeks | ~2 weeks |
Screenbridge Reach has three flat monthly prices. Ad creation and campaign management are included in all of them. Using the $25–$60 CPM range, those are the rough monthly impression counts each budget buys.
For comparison: at a $25K/month media budget, a traditionally produced campaign adds $30K–$80K in production before launch. With Reach, that bill doesn't exist.
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Minimum Budgets Across the Market
The minimum spend, more than the CPM, decides which options are open to you:
- Low-minimum self-serve platforms start at a few hundred to a few thousand dollars a month. You make the ads and run the campaigns yourself.
- Enterprise self-serve platforms work best when someone in-house knows CTV buying and your video is TV-ready.
- Managed services mostly require $10,000 to $50,000 per month in media spend. Screenbridge Reach has no minimum, and from $10K/month everything is included, creative too.
Our Vibe.co alternative breakdown covers when self-serve is the right call, and our MNTN alternative comparison covers the enterprise self-serve end.
Honestly: if your budget is below the managed-service level, self-serve is the right tool. Once you're above it, the harder problems are ad quality and week-to-week campaign upkeep, and that's what a managed service is for.
What It Costs on Roku, Hulu and Tubi
Most streaming platforms do not publish their CPMs, but their self-serve tools do publish an entry point. Roku Ads Manager starts at as little as $500, and Roku says $500 to $1,000 is enough to get a first campaign live. Disney Campaign Manager, which buys Hulu and Disney+, has a $500 minimum per campaign. Universal Ads, Comcast's self-serve route to Tubi, says there is no minimum commitment and campaigns can start at $100. The CPM figures you will find for these platforms come from agencies and ad-tech vendors, not from the platforms themselves, so treat them as estimates and ask any seller which apps the money actually buys.
| Platform | Self-serve entry point | CPM | Where the number comes from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Roku | From about $500 (Roku Ads Manager) | Not published; set dynamically by demand and inventory | Roku's own pricing page, February 2026 |
| Hulu | $500 per campaign (Disney Campaign Manager) | Not published by Disney | Disney Campaign Manager FAQ, September 2026 |
| Tubi | No minimum commitment; from $100 (Universal Ads) | Industry estimates of $15 to $25 | Universal Ads, June 2026 (entry point); industry estimates (CPM) |
Tubi is a free, ad-supported service with about 100 million monthly active users, so pricing below subscription services is what you would expect from a free service. It is not the low-attention signal a sub-$15 CPM usually is.
For the full breakdown on a single platform, see what Roku advertising costs and what Hulu advertising costs, or our guides to advertising on Tubi, Peacock, Paramount+ and Pluto TV. The platform CPM is only part of the bill if you still need a TV-ready ad; that is the cost a managed buy with creative included takes off the table.
Three Mistakes That Make CTV Cost More Than It Should
The most expensive problems never show up on an invoice:
- 1Paying for the same ad twice. A spot made for one platform's specs, then re-edited for another. Cutting everything from one library of source footage avoids this.
- 2Showing the same household your ad too many times. Without weekly management, you keep paying to reach people who've already seen the ad plenty. Frequency capping is basic upkeep, and easy to miss when nobody owns the process.
- 3Testing with one ad. If a single spot underperforms, you can't tell whether TV failed or that ad did. Because ad creation is included at every Screenbridge tier, testing several versions doesn't cost extra.
The ecommerce-specific version of this math is in CTV advertising for DTC brands.
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Frequently asked questions
Written by
Co-Founder, CMO, and Head of Media Strategy
Timothy Lalonde is Co-Founder, CMO, and Head of Media Strategy at Screenbridge Reach, a CTV ad management service that pairs media buying with premium creative production for DTC brands. Drawing on a decade of creative production work for DTC and CPG brands, he develops media strategy for every client campaign and prefers plain numbers over vendor talk when explaining what actually moves performance.
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