"In real terms, what else costs less today than it did 10 years ago?" asks Sharon Daly.

One of the most persistent refrains marketers have about television advertising – and one that’s central to the TV Advertising Paradox – is that it’s a hugely expensive medium, especially when compared to digital. But just because a perception is persistent doesn’t mean it’s true.

If we park some of the indisputably powerful things about TV – amazing reach, superior attention, brand safety, mainstream viewability, fantastic ROI – and just think about the pure cost side of the equation, TV is cheap. Actually, it’s incredibly cheap!

To appreciate exactly how cheap, we need a bit of context.

How TV is traded is confusing and masks its incredible cost efficiency

TV has traditionally been priced and traded on CPTs – that’s cost per TARP to you and me – which is the cost to reach 1% of your target demographic (refer to the article on Decoding Broadcast Babble on page 56). TV is the only medium that works on TARPS and CPTs, every other media reports in audiences, impressions, and CPMs, or the cost to reach 1,000 pairs of eyeballs. Which is simple, obvious, and sensible, right?

There’s no simple way to directly compare across different media when you’re trying to compare an apple with a refrigerator. A CPT might look something like $320 while the equivalent cost expressed as a CPM would be around $7.70. This confusion is entirely our fault as broadcasters – but it means it’s unsurprising that TV is perceived as expensive. Apples vs refrigerators!

The population has grown by 1.1m people – but the price is still the same

The adult population, or people 18+, has grown by a whopping 37% over the past 20 years – that’s an extra 1.1 million people. So back in 2004, a TARP was equivalent to 30,000 people, while now a TARP reaches 41,000. That means TV has to deliver an extra 11,000 eyeballs to maintain every TARP. Is it really any surprise then that it looks like the cost of TV is inflating when we’re reporting in CPTs?

TV costs are actually deflating

If TV measured and priced its audiences in the same way that other media do, we’d see that the cost to advertise on TV has remained static for at least the last 10 years. That’s right – the cost to reach a thousand adult eyeballs has barely moved for a decade. In real terms that’s an average annual compound inflation of just 0.4%. Go ahead, try to think of something (anything) that has increased in price by less than half a percent a year over the past 10 years. I bet you can’t.

While a lot is said about the sky-rocketing costs of TV advertising, in reality it hasn’t even kept pace with inflation. If we simply inflation adjusted those CPMs over the last 10 years, they would be 26% higher than they were in 2024.

New Zealand TV advertising costs 80% less than in Australia

The good news for marketers goes well beyond deflating costs – it’s just incredibly good value for money. Yes, NZ has a small population base. But if you’re a trans-Tasman advertiser, consider that TV CPMs in New Zealand cost roughly 20% of what they are across the ditch. For Australian brands selling into the New Zealand market, that’s a number worth taking a very close look at. Remember that $7.68 plays somewhere in the mid $30s in Australia – all to reach the same 1,000 eyeballs.

TV advertising in New Zealand is extremely cost efficient. On a global scale, there’s very little that compares in real terms (OK, maybe CPMs in Mexico and Kazakhstan might). And don’t forget that your $7.68 is across a video-based, dynamic and well-measured medium, on which you can do post-campaign verification and evaluation.

But TV advertising is really cost prohibitive, right?

For businesses at scale, the short answer is a hard no. Paradoxically, television advertising is still perceived as expensive, when in real terms, it’s cheaper than ever. As long as the perception of cost remains a barrier to entry, it will also remain more of an opportunity for marketers.

Given its reach, effectiveness, cut through, longevity, brand storytelling power and ROI, linear TV advertising is surprisingly affordable. And if you’re a trans-Tasman brand with aspirations on growing your New Zealand market, you’re getting an absolute bargain.

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