Hey everyone, I’m Matthew Slyman, Strategic Web Marketer and Consultant at Page Progressive. In today’s blog post, I explain how, out of all the mainstream forms of advertising, Google Ads can get you the best bang for your buck.
Before I get started: In the last post, I explained why Google Ads is hands-down the most powerful form of advertising on the planet. If you missed that entry, consider visiting our clicking here and checking it out. But in that last blog post, I made a direct comparison to some of the most mainstream forms of advertising including TV, Radio and Billboard. And I also told you how advertising with Google can be done at 1/5th the cost…and in some cases, even less than that.
So what does it cost to advertise on television? And how does it compare to Google Ads? Well, first of all, there are many variables to consider when advertising on television including the population of the area you’re advertising in, the type of broadcast, the popularity of that particular viewing and the time of day. But to cut to the chase, a 30-second ad slot could cost anywhere from $100 to $1500. That’s just for one 30-second showing of your advertisement. Now, there’s a common measurement used for this. It’s called “CPM” or “Cost Per One Thousand Views.” And even though the average cost of local TV advertising can range anywhere from $5 to $35 CPM, the data shows that in most cities around the country, it ends up falling somewhere between $20 and $30 per every 1,000 views. Again, this is for a 30-second commercial. And in case you’re scratching your head wondering if that’s a lot…it is.
Let’s compare that to Google’s form of video ads which we all basically know as YouTube. And for those of you who haven’t yet caught on, Google now owns YouTube…and has created several incredible advertising options for their platform. Now, Google does give you the flexibility to choose what kind of bidding strategy you want to go with. But just to make sure we’re comparing apples to apples here, if you choose to go the CPM route, you’ll spend on average about $7 per one thousand views. That’s anywhere from 1/3rd to 1/4th the cost of what you would pay for TV advertising in most cities.
Same thing with Radio…which can widely range anywhere from $200 to $5,000 per week depending on where you live. And let’s not forget to factor in the cost of producing the commercial. Writing the script, hiring the right voice-over talent, paying for recording time, editing…and then there’s the copyrighting. All of these things together could cost more than a thousand dollars. This applies to billboards as well. Before you even get into the heavy costs of advertising on billboards, think about how much you’re going to pay someone to design that billboard. Now, the actual cost of billboard advertising can be as little as $250/month in small towns and rural areas, $1000 to $4000/month in small cities and $10,000-$15,000 or more in most major cities across the country. And as we discussed in our last post, you better hope and pray that people are actually watching your television commercial, listening to your radio ad or taking notice of your billboard as they’re driving by.
But let’s get down to brass tax here: If we were to take all the information I just gave you concerning the average cost of TV, radio or billboard advertising and broke it all down to a national average of what most people would pay, you’re looking at roughly four to five thousand dollars a month. This is probably what many service providers or product based businesses would end up paying for advertising in most cities across the country. If you’re in a major city, you can go ahead and double those numbers. Why not take that same four or five thousand dollars and put it into a Google Search campaign, where they will only appear before people who are in the middle of searching for your specific product or service? Or why not take that same money and get up to three or four times the viewership on YouTube…and from specifically targeted people who may actually have an affinity for the very thing you’re advertising? Or better yet, spend 1/5th the cost and make sure your ad appears before the same amount of people it would on TV, only these could be people who are actually in the market for what you’re selling!
If we take the CPM model as previously mentioned, you could spend $5000 for one month of television advertising which, at a rate of $25 per one thousand views would mean that your advertisement would be seen by 200,000 people…who may or may not be actually watching the screen while your commercial is airing. BUT, if you put that same video advertisement on YouTube, at a rate of $7 per one thousand views, your advertisement would be shown over 700,000 times to an audience of people with a much higher level of interest in what you’re showing them. This means that the same budget you would use up in one month of TV ads could essentially be spread across five months of advertising on YouTube while garnering almost four-times more views…again, by an audience of people who would actually care about what you’re selling.
I don’t know, maybe I’m just different but…makes sense to me…
I know, I know…you might be saying (I’ve heard it all before) “But Matthew, I have tried Google Ads” or “I’ve tried advertising on YouTube…and it didn’t really do that much for my business.” Trust me, I get it. Before I was trained by Google and became certified in Google Ads and Google Analytics, I had a similar experience. You’re right, most people never even get to scratch the surface when launching their Google Ad campaign. And there are many, many reasons for this. But that is something I’ll have to tackle in another blog post.
For now, if you enjoyed this post, don’t forget to share with others. And don’t forget: Google Ads really does get you the best bang for your buck!