Selecting Specific Media Vehicles
The media planner must search for the most cost-effective vehicles within each chosen media type.
The advertiser who decides to buy 30 seconds of advertising on network television can pay around
$100,000 for a new show, over $300,000 for a popular prime-time show such as Sunday Night
Football, American Idol, Grey’s Anatomy, or Desperate Housewives, or over $2.5 million for an event
such as the Super Bowl.41 These choices are critical: The average cost to produce a national 30-second
television commercial in 2007 was about $342,000.42 It can cost as much to run an ad once on
network TV as to create and produce the ad to start with!