Guide
Local TV advertising
Definition, cost, advantages
Local TV advertising enables businesses to reach audiences in specific geographic areas through both linear and streaming TV. Traditional broadcast and cable television maintain strong local reach, while streaming TV solutions allow businesses to engage audiences wherever they watch content.
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What is local TV advertising?
Local TV advertising is the practice of purchasing ad placements to reach audiences in specific locales or designated market areas (DMAs). Traditionally, these advertisements appear during local programming, including prime slots like the local news, targeting local audiences within specific broadcast regions.
Streaming TV has expanded local advertising opportunities by enabling relevant geographic targeting across digitally delivered content, combining traditional DMA targeting with advanced audience segmentation. Whether through traditional broadcasts or streaming services, local advertising helps businesses boost visibility within their geographic area, such as car dealerships promoting seasonal sales, home improvement businesses during peak renovation seasons, or universities advertising enrollment.
How much does local TV advertising cost?
The cost of reaching audiences varies based on delivery method, population, and audience reach. Local TV advertising rates depend heavily on the locale’s population and time slot selection, with prime time and special events commanding premium rates.
Major market segments during prime time can cost tens of thousands with special events like the Super Bowl commanding the highest premiums, even for local marketplace insertions. For smaller market segments and local advertising, rates vary significantly, and businesses can contact their local TV stations directly for current pricing and available time slots. However, TV rates typically range from $5 to $30 per thousand viewers (cost per mille (CPM)) for a 30-second commercial spot. For streaming TV solutions, pricing models often offer more flexibility with lower minimum spends and the ability to set specific budget caps while reaching relevant local audiences.
Beyond media placement costs, advertisers should consider several additional expenses that impact the total campaign investment. These include video production costs for creating commercial content, agency fees if working with professional services, and talent and rights fees which vary based on usage and scope. Many local stations or streaming providers can recommend production partners who understand both locale-specific requirements and budget constraints.
How do you buy local TV ads?
The process of purchasing local TV advertising varies based on your chosen medium. Traditional linear TV typically involves direct negotiations with station representatives to secure optimal time slots for reaching relevant audiences. These traditional buys require understanding of viewership patterns and integrating with broader marketing initiatives for comprehensive market coverage.
Streaming TV solutions offer flexible buying options to suit different advertiser needs. Businesses can choose self-service solutions to directly manage their own campaigns, controlling budgets and targeting while optimizing performance in real-time. Alternatively, managed-service solutions provide hands-on support from experts who handle campaign strategy, execution, and optimization.
How does local TV advertising differ between cable, network, broadcast, and streaming TV advertising?
Each television advertising format offers distinct advantages for reaching viewers, with varying degrees of targeting capability and market coverage:
Cable TV advertising
Local cable TV advertising offers zone-targeted ads within specific locales, enabling businesses to reach audiences in defined neighborhoods. Unlike local broadcast TV, cable advertising often provides more niche audience engagement through specialized channels.
Broadcast TV advertising
Traditional broadcast stations combine network content with local programming, helping advertisers leverage both broad reach and community-specific opportunities. This format remains crucial for maximizing visibility among linear TV audiences.
Network TV advertising
Network advertising delivers national coverage through major broadcasters, with opportunities for local marketplace insertions. Premium events like the Super Bowl command the highest rates but offer unprecedented viewership levels.
Streaming TV advertising
Streaming TV delivers video content over the internet to any connected device, from smartphones to smart TVs. For example, advertisers can reach audiences watching content through services like Prime Video regardless of the device used. Content includes everything from primetime shows to live sports events, without traditional cable infrastructure. Streaming TV can also engage relevant audiences while maintaining local marketplace focus, combining reach with detailed measurement capabilities.
Connected TV advertising
Connected TV (CTV) specifically refers to ads shown on television sets that can access the internet, either through built-in smart TV capabilities or devices like the Fire TV Stick. While all CTV advertising is delivered via streaming, not all Streaming TV ads appear on connected TVs. CTV combines the impact of traditional TV viewing with digital targeting, offering advertisers a way to reach relevant audiences watching streaming content on the biggest screen in the home.
Advantages of local TV advertising
Local TV ads offer several key benefits for businesses aiming to boost their presence. Whether through traditional broadcast or modern streaming services, brands can connect with relevant geographic audiences while building community trust.
Geographic precision
Local TV advertising is excellent for reaching audiences in specific locales, offering powerful benefits for businesses looking to strengthen their presence in certain locations. While linear TV has broad reach within designated market areas (DMAs), streaming services add another layer of detail by overlaying audience segments with geo-targeting.
Brand credibility
Television presence has historically established credibility among local audiences. Today's streaming solutions maintain this benefit while adding the authenticity of reaching audiences wherever they watch content. Seeing a brand alongside premium content, whether during local news broadcasts or popular streaming shows, helps build trust with community members. This credibility is particularly valuable for businesses like healthcare providers and financial services, where trust plays a crucial role in consumer decision-making.
High-impact delivery
The combination of sight, sound, and motion helps businesses maximize visibility and emotional connection with audiences across both traditional and streaming formats. TV advertising enables powerful brand storytelling, allowing businesses to demonstrate products, showcase services, and create emotional resonance with their audience. Whether it's a local restaurant capturing the sizzle of their signature dishes or a home services company showing dramatic before-and-after transformations, video advertising helps bring stories to life.
Audience insights
While traditional TV offers basic viewership metrics, streaming solutions provide detailed audience insights and engagement analytics to optimize campaign performance. Advertisers can now understand exactly how audiences interact with their ads, from completion rates to audience demographics, enabling mid-campaign adjustments for better results. These rich insights help businesses make informed decisions about everything from ad creative to when to run their ads, while measuring incremental reach across viewing environments.
Disadvantages of local TV advertising
When planning local TV campaigns, advertisers should consider several challenges that can impact campaign effectiveness:
High production costs
Creating high-quality video content requires significant investment, regardless of where ads will appear. While professional production can help establish credibility, the costs of commercial production can be substantial for businesses new to video advertising. However, many production teams now specialize in creating content that works effectively across traditional, streaming, and other online video mediums, helping maximize the return on production investment.
Limited targeting capabilities
Local TV ads traditionally rely on broader demographic insights and viewing patterns to reach audiences. While linear TV provides reliable geographic targeting through designated market areas (DMAs), streaming services can enhance this with additional targeting layers based on audience insights. This combination helps advertisers refine their approach to reach the most relevant audiences.
Measurement challenges
Measuring campaign success in local TV advertising presents unique challenges. Linear TV provides established metrics like ratings and reach, but measuring campaign effectiveness can be difficult without additional attribution and recall studies. Streaming solutions are addressing these challenges by offering more detailed performance insights in real-time.
For example, Brand+ from Amazon Ads uses AI to combine trillions of signals across Amazon to help advertisers better understand and reach their audiences.
Declining linear TV viewership
While linear TV maintains significant reach, particularly for live events and local news, cord-cutting is on the rise. Streaming solutions help advertisers follow audiences to their preferred viewing environments with 99% of U.S. households subscribing to one or more streaming services.1
How to measure success of local TV ads
You can measure the success of local TV advertising through various metrics and analytics tools, with capabilities varying between linear TV and streaming solutions.
Linear TV ads on cable and broadcast
Traditional linear TV advertising success is measured through established broadcast metrics that focus on audience reach and frequency. Key performance indicators include Gross Rating Points (GRPs), which multiply audience size by ad frequency within a campaign window to estimate household reach as a percentage. Nielsen Ratings provide total viewer numbers, while additional metrics like Cost Per Point (CPP) help evaluate spending efficiency. While these measurements offer insights into campaign reach, they typically require supplemental analytics, such as attribution modeling or brand recall studies, to measure actual campaign effectiveness and audience response.
Streaming TV ads
Streaming TV advertising success can be measured through more detailed, digital-first metrics that track both audience engagement and business outcomes. Key performance indicators include video completion rates, unique reach, frequency, and household-level exposure data across different devices. Advertisers can measure incremental reach beyond linear TV, track audience demographics in real time, and connect viewing data to actions like website visits or purchases. These digital measurement capabilities allow for mid-campaign optimizations and more accurate return on ad spend calculations than traditional TV metrics.
Traditional linear TV vs. streaming TV
Local TV advertising continues to evolve as viewing habits change, with both linear TV and streaming options offering distinct advantages for advertisers. Linear TV maintains strong reach through established broadcast networks, particularly excelling in live events and local news. Meanwhile, streaming TV helps advertisers reach audiences across various devices and viewing environments, adding enhanced targeting capabilities and detailed performance measurement.
Many successful local advertising campaigns now incorporate both approaches, combining linear TV's broad marketplace coverage with streaming's flexibility and accuracy. As viewing habits continue to evolve, streaming services offer advertisers additional options, from self-service solutions to managed solutions, helping businesses adapt their advertising approach to changing consumer behaviors.
Video ads solutions from Amazon Ads
Amazon Ads offers comprehensive video advertising solutions to help businesses reach audiences across streaming TV and online video services. From Prime Video and live sports to Twitch and third-party publishers, these solutions help brands connect with relevant audiences throughout their viewing journey.
Available to businesses whether or not they sell on Amazon*, our video advertising solutions support various industries and objectives—from local restaurants and car dealerships to hotels and fitness studios. These flexible options help businesses of all sizes leverage the power of video advertising across Amazon's easy-to-use ad tech suite.
Streaming TV
Show up alongside the content your customers love with Streaming TV ads. These full-screen, non-skippable video ads appear before, during, or after video content like TV shows, movies and live entertainment across connected TV, mobile, and desktop. They can appear on Prime Video and live sports programming like Thursday Night Football, Twitch, Fire TV Channels, and top third-party TV publishers and broadcasters.
Sponsored TV
Sponsored TV is a self-service advertising solution designed for brands of any size to reach and inspire audiences on the largest screen in the home. Powered by billions of first-party shopping and streaming signals, these Streaming TV ads can help your brand connect with the right audiences, in the right time on streaming services like Prime Video and Twitch.
Online video
Online video (OLV) ads are in-stream (before, during, or after video content) and out-stream (in non-video environments between text and images) ads across desktop, mobile, and tablet. Online video ads appear on Amazon-affiliated sites including IMDb.com and Twitch, as well as top third-party publishers.
Create AI-optimized TV ad campaigns with Brand+
Brand+ is an industry-first AI capability that models audiences predicted to be in-market for a product or service. By analyzing trillions of shopping, browsing, and streaming signals, Brand+ helps identify and reach potential customers throughout their journey, helping marketers deliver Streaming TV and online video ads across Prime Video, Twitch, and premium publishers. During beta testing, advertisers saw more than a 10% increase in sales and over 70% increase in website traffic, while maintaining flexible optimization controls.
Tips for creating effective video ads
Creating compelling video ads that resonate with local audiences requires strategic planning and thoughtful execution. Here are key considerations for developing effective video advertising campaigns:
Define your purpose
Start by establishing clear goals for your video advertising campaign. Your objectives—whether building awareness or driving sales—will guide your creative strategy and help determine the most effective approach for engaging your audience.
Capture attention early
The opening moments of your video ad are critical for audience engagement, particularly in today's multi-screen environment. Start strong with compelling visuals or messages that immediately showcase your brand name or key benefit. Incorporating emotion or action in these first few seconds helps hook viewers and maintain their attention throughout your message.
Keep it clear and actionable
Maintain consistent branding throughout your video while emphasizing your unique value proposition. Keep your message focused and memorable to build trust with your audience. Close with a clear call-to-action that guides your audience to take the next step, whether that's visiting your location, making a call, or responding to a time-sensitive offer.
Deliver quality content
Create your video with high production quality that reflects well on your brand and resonates with audiences. Quality video production is now more accessible than ever, with options ranging from AI-powered tools to freelance creators and professional agencies. Consider producing multiple versions of your ad in different lengths (15, 30, and 60 seconds), and ensure each version follows channel-specific guidelines for optimal delivery across all viewing environments.
No video? No problem
Whether you have existing video assets or are starting from scratch, Amazon's video creative production and editing services can help you produce inspiring videos for streaming TV. Get your video as added value with qualifying campaigns or as affordable at-cost fee-based services.
Sponsored TV and Streaming TV ads examples
Case Study
Holy Stone, an emerging drone manufacturer, collaborated with Amazon Ads to create compelling Streaming TV ads in just three simple steps. The brand efficiently produced a 30-second video that brought their product features to life through dynamic visual storytelling. This case study demonstrates how growing brands can access professional video advertising solutions to engage potential customers and effectively share their brand story through Streaming TV ads.
Case Study
Yamaha Boats and WaveRunners expanded their digital marketing strategy by implementing Sponsored TV ads to reach new audiences and enhance their existing campaign mix. The brand, which doesn't sell products on Amazon, partnered with agency Marketwake to leverage Amazon Ads audience insights and complement their successful paid search and social media campaigns. The strategy proved highly effective, resulting in significant performance improvements across channels, including a 55% increase in paid social click-through rates and more efficient Connected TV advertising with 30% lower CPMs.
Case Study
Physician's Choice, a wellness brand known for its bestselling probiotics and digestive enzymes on Amazon, sought to expand their audience reach through innovative advertising solutions. The brand was particularly drawn to Sponsored TV's flexibility, offering streaming TV advertising with no minimum spend requirements or upfront commitments. Building on their successful user-generated content strategy from Sponsored Brands video campaigns, Physician's Choice applied these learnings to their Sponsored TV ads, reaching viewers across Prime Video, Twitch, Freevee, and other premium streaming content. Their strategic approach paid off, with Sponsored TV campaigns achieving a 33% lower cost per click compared to their other streaming TV initiatives, demonstrating the effectiveness of this self-service advertising solution.
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If you have limited experience, contact us to request services managed by Amazon Ads. Budget minimums apply.
FAQs
Local TV ads can be an effective way to reach audiences in specific geographic areas when properly executed. Success typically depends on developing a well-planned strategy that uses the most appropriate TV advertising medium for your desired audience, whether that's traditional linear TV, streaming services, or a combination of both. Successful campaigns align strategy, creative approach, and placement with clear business objectives.
Local TV advertising encompasses both traditional broadcast channels and digital streaming services. Advertisers can choose from various formats including standard commercial spots (15, 30, or 60 seconds), program sponsorships, and branded content integrations. These ads can be purchased through direct station buys for linear TV, self-service streaming solutions, or programmatic video solutions, each offering unique combinations of geographic targeting, audience reach, and measurement capabilities.
National TV advertising reaches audiences across the entire country through major networks, while local TV advertising engages audiences in specific geographic areas or designated market areas (DMAs). The primary differences are in reach and cost. National TV campaigns typically require much larger budgets, often starting at several hundred thousand dollars, whereas local TV advertising is more affordable. Both national and local TV ads can be executed through either linear TV broadcasts or streaming services, with local campaigns offering more accurate geographic targeting options.
Industries that benefit most from local TV ads are those serving specific geographic areas and requiring high-impact visual storytelling to reach local audiences. Auto dealerships typically lead local TV ad spending, followed by healthcare providers (hospitals, medical groups), educational institutions (universities, trade schools), retail stores (furniture, jewelry), and local services (law firms, home improvement). These businesses leverage local TV advertising across both linear and streaming platforms to build community trust, showcase products or services, and reach audiences during key decision-making moments. Real estate agencies, restaurants, and entertainment venues also see strong results from local TV campaigns.
The cost of a 30-second local TV ad varies significantly and is influenced by multiple factors, including commercial length, seasonal timing, the time of day your ad runs, and geographic location. In most locales, the average cost per thousand viewers is between $5-30. Additional production costs typically range from $2,000-25,000 depending on creative complexity. Streaming TV alternatives often offer more flexible entry points, with some solutions offering no minimum spends and CPMs typically in the range of $5-50.
1 Forbes Home | Top Streaming Statistics in 2024
*Subject to certain Amazon Ads policies and restrictions available here.