Making an advert can seem like a daunting process. But that needn’t be the case. In fact the process is relatively straightforward. There are four key stages:
1. Buying your ad space.
This is where you book the channels and period you want your ad to run. You decide here whether you want to run a national campaign or regional campaign. It can be much easier to approach a company who provide a media buying service rather going individually to each channel directly. The amount of people the Ad will reach will dictate the cost you pay. They will advise you on where and when to run the Ad if you want to appeal to certain audiences. This element is often the most expensive and most important part of making an Ad. You have to make sure the right demographic are seeing your advert.
2. Making your Ad
For us this is the exciting part. Key elements here are making sure you plan everything out before your begin shooting. Get the script exactly right and make sure it appeals to your audience. So much work goes in before a camera is even picked up to make sure TV Ads do what you want them to. Keeping on time and on budget are crucial in TV adverts because the deadlines are very costly to move. It’s also important to make sure the technical side of things meets certain broadcast standards. This is why a TV Ad can cost a lot more to produce than something for online use.
A big cost people forget in TV Ad production can be usage fees for actors, voice over and music. If you’re going to make a TV Advert it would always be best to hire a production company to make sure everything is done correctly.
3. Clearing your Ad
All TV adverts have to be cleared for broadcast by Clearcast in the UK. Any production company that creates TV ads will be registered with Clearcast. There are various stages involved in clearing a TV Ad for broadcast.
Crucially you should always clear the script before you begin production. Otherwise it might prove very costly. The service is quick and very efficient. They even allow you to clear the rough cut. This is great; as any problems can be found before you begin grading and finalising.
The final clearance will be for the final advert. Without this clearance, it will not be broadcast.
4. Playout delivery
To get a TV advert to be broadcast there are a couple of different service providers who handle this such as Adstream and IMD. When you have your advert finished and cleared it needs to be uploaded to one of these systems in the correct format.
You will then pay for each channel and platform the Ad will be shown. Each advert will have a unique clock number at the start that will be sent out to all the broadcasters. The final stage is to send out the “copy instructions.” These are essentially the instructions to the broadcasters on what to do with the advert. These will link back up with the media space you have purchased in the first step. So it is vital all the paperwork and the clocks match up and are correct.