Financial Consideration

As with any type of commercial broadcasting there are fee's that have to be paid and budgets the be adhered too. Generally radio advertising is charged at a rate of approximately £2 per thousand listeners at one time. This would mean that if a show has 100,00 listeners at 10am then buying a 30 second spot at that time it will cost you £200. 
Then later on in the evening at 11pm, the shows 10,000 listeners would only cost £20. You should usually expect a time slot of 30 seconds to cost you around £250 - £1000 per week, this will obviously depend on how often your ad is broadcast and the amount of listeners. 

If you're wishing to advertise on the radio you should try and choose the stations that have the highest concentration of target audience, rather than just going for those that are the more popular. For example, you shouldn't just go for Capital as it has more listeners than Gold radio when you're trying to target the elderly generation. 


Developing the advertisement should not cost more than 10% of your budget. It will be around £250 for smaller stations, however around £2000 for more popular ones. These fees will include script writing, actors to do the voice - overs, music and sound effects. If you would like to use a popular song in you advert, you will be looking at up to £25,000 in licencing fees. 

The above is an example of a Radio Rate Card. It details all the prices that will be charged depending on the time, listeners, station etc.