OTT and CTV advertising costs roughly $15 to $85 per thousand impressions (CPM), with most well-targeted campaigns landing in the $25 to $45 range. Ad-supported inventory runs lower; premium, fully-targeted direct buys run higher. Real campaigns can start in the low four figures per month, not the enterprise five figures the big shops imply.
Most agencies will quote you streaming TV pricing only after a discovery call, a proposal, and a handshake. We just put the numbers on the page. Streaming TV got a reputation for being a Fortune 500 toy. It isn't anymore. The inventory is programmatic, the minimums dropped, and the only thing standing between a growth-stage business and an ad on someone's living-room TV is a partner willing to tell you what it costs. So here's what it costs.
OTT and CTV in one breath
OTT (over-the-top) is any video delivered over the internet instead of through a cable or satellite box: Hulu, Peacock, Tubi, Max, Paramount+. CTV (connected TV) is the device that internet video plays on: a smart TV, a Roku, a Fire Stick, an Apple TV, a game console. In practice, when you advertise on streaming TV, you're buying OTT inventory served on CTV devices. Same campaign, same stack, two words for two halves of the same thing. We go deeper on the distinction in the OTT vs CTV breakdown, but for budgeting purposes, treat them as one buy.
What a good CTV CPM looks like
Pricing is driven by inventory tier and how tightly you target. Here are the ranges we work with, published openly because almost nobody else will.
| Inventory tier | Typical CPM | What you're buying |
|---|---|---|
| Ad-supported / FAST channels (Tubi, Pluto, Roku Channel) | $15 to $30 | Broad reach, lighter targeting, lowest cost per impression |
| Standard programmatic (open exchange + PMP) | $25 to $45 | The workhorse tier: solid targeting, strong scale, the range most campaigns live in |
| Premium whitelisted inventory (named, brand-safe apps) | $40 to $65 | Top-tier streaming apps, full audience targeting, premium content adjacency |
| Premium direct buys (specific platform deals) | $45 to $85 | Direct platform relationships, guaranteed placements, the highest-control option |
A few honest notes on those numbers:
- $25 to $45 is the real center of gravity. If someone quotes you a flat $12 CPM, ask what inventory it's running on, because rock-bottom CPMs usually mean run-of-network placements with no household targeting and weak brand safety. Cheap impressions on garbage inventory are not a deal.
- CTV runs roughly 2x to 4x linear TV CPMs for comparable reach. You pay more per thousand because you get household-level targeting, completion-rate measurement, and digital-style attribution that broadcast can't touch. The premium buys you precision, not just a screen. (If you're weighing the two side by side, we lay it out in OTT vs linear TV advertising.)
- CPM is not the whole story. Two campaigns at the same CPM can perform worlds apart depending on completion rate (how many people watch the full spot) and frequency (how many times the same household sees it). We optimize to cost-per-completed-view and household reach, not just the headline CPM.
Want to turn a budget into estimated households and completed views? Run the numbers in our CTV reach estimator.
OTT advertising cost: how much budget do you need
This is where the enterprise myth dies. You do not need a $50,000-a-month media commitment to run streaming TV.
- Testing tier (~$1,000 to $3,000/month): Enough to get a real campaign live on real CTV inventory, reach measurable households, and learn what your audience responds to. Smaller than this and frequency gets too thin to mean anything, you'll spread a handful of impressions across too many homes and nobody remembers seeing you.
- Working tier (~$3,000 to $10,000/month): The range where most growth-stage and mid-market campaigns find their stride: meaningful reach, enough frequency to build recall, and room to optimize across inventory tiers and test creative variants. This is also the band where measurement gets honest, because there's enough volume for completed-view and site-visit data to mean something.
- Scale tier ($10,000+/month): Now you're buying premium whitelisted inventory at scale, layering richer audience targeting, and treating CTV as a genuine demand-driver rather than a test. At this level CTV usually stops working alone and starts pairing with programmatic display and retargeting to close the loop on viewers who saw the spot.
The reason this is possible at all: streaming inventory is now overwhelmingly programmatic, which collapsed the old minimums that protected the big agencies. The accessible angle is real. We've built our OTT/CTV program specifically for businesses the enterprise-floor shops won't take a meeting with, the same gap we cover in our Strategus alternative breakdown. It's also why a channel that used to be a national-brand play now works for, say, a multi-location home services company that wants the living-room screen without the national budget. We've written that exact playbook for OTT advertising for home services.
Why streaming TV is worth the CPM now
The audience already moved. A clear majority of US adults now use streaming services, while traditional cable and satellite subscriptions keep declining. Streaming has grown into a leading share of all US TV viewing, rivaling broadcast and cable combined.
Translation: the living room is now an addressable, measurable, internet-delivered channel. You can target by household geography down to the ZIP, by demographic, by behavior, and by life event, then measure completed views and downstream site visits. That's the part linear TV could never do, and it's why the CPM premium is not a tax, it's the feature. The reach math for a small or mid-market advertiser is more favorable than most owners assume, which is the whole point of our small-business CTV statistics research.
What you're paying for (the fee, the markup, the gotchas)
This is where most agencies get vague. We won't. Your monthly cost has exactly two parts: the media (billed at cost) and our management fee (separate and stated). That's it. Everything below is just how those two parts behave.
- Media is billed at cost. Whatever the inventory costs, that's what you pay. We do not mark up your ad spend. The CPMs above are media, not media-plus-a-hidden-cut.
- Our management fee is separate and transparent. It's a tiered fee that shrinks as your budget grows, because a bigger budget shouldn't mean a bigger percentage handed to your agency. The full structure lives on the main pricing page, where you can build your own monthly invoice before you ever talk to us.
- What the fee covers. Audience build and targeting setup, inventory and brand-safety vetting, creative trafficking and QA, frequency capping so you're not hammering the same household, and ongoing optimization to cost-per-completed-view. It is the work that turns a media buy into a campaign, not a finder's fee for clicking "launch."
- No annual lock-in. Setup is waived on a 6-month commitment, but we don't do handcuff contracts. If the work isn't working, you're not trapped.
- No CPM games. No mystery "blended rate" that quietly bundles markup into the media cost. No selling you cheap remnant inventory at premium prices. The number you see is the number that runs.
Who runs your campaign
Senior people. No interns building your media plan, no junior account manager you'll never get on the phone. The same people who set your strategy are the ones in the platform optimizing it, watching completion rates, pruning weak inventory, and adjusting frequency before waste compounds. That's the part a quote form can't sell you: who touches the account once the money is live.
If you want the full picture of how we build and run streaming TV, that's the OTT & CTV advertising service page. If you're newer to the channel and want the ground-up explainer, start with the OTT/CTV advertising guide.
Now build your plan
You've got the CPMs, the minimums, and the math. The next move is turning it into your number. Head to the pricing page to build your own monthly investment, or book 30 minutes and we'll map a streaming TV plan to your budget and your audience. Zero pressure, zero CPM games, zero BS. Questions first? admin@moonsauceagency.com.
