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# Changing TV Audience Changing the Math for Marketers, Reports AdAge
- URL: https://capitolcommunicator.com/adage-reports-on-rising-cost-of-reaching-tv-viewers/
- Published: 2017-10-09T15:10:02.000Z
- Updated: 2017-10-09T17:15:03.000Z
- Author: Capitol Communicator
- Tags: Advertising, Marketing, Insights, #wp-bottom-left-sponsored, #Import 2026-10-08 18:48

**Twenty years ago, 30 seconds of ad time during NBC’s “Seinfeld” was the most expensive real estate on TV**, reports [AdAge](http://adage.com/article/media/shrinkage-a-back-1997-ad-rates-seinfeld/310795/?ref=capitolcommunicator.com), but it was “still a steal compared to this year’s costliest programming, revealing just how much the splintering of TV’s audience is changing the math for marketers.

“Advertisers paid an average of $575,000 per spot in the sendoff season of “Seinfeld” from 1997 through 1998, according to a contemporary Ad Age report. That’s a staggering $876,959 in 2017 dollars—topping everything then and now. This year’s most expensive show, “Sunday Night Football,” averaged just shy of $700,000 a throw for NBC in upfront negotiations.

“But the final season of “Seinfeld” also averaged 22.3 million viewers in advertisers’ coveted 18-to-49-year-old target, making it TV’s highest rated show. The cost per thousand impressions, or CPM in TV jargon, was $25.80 in 1997 dollars and $39.35 when inflation rates are factored in.

“That would be an enormous discount on the per-thousand cost of today’s “Sunday Night Football.” Through the first four weeks of the new NFL season, “Sunday Night Football” is the top-rated prime-time broadcast program, with an average of 9.28 million viewers 18 to 49\. So the target-demo CPM for “SNF” is $75.38, a 92 percent premium over the inflation-adjusted cost of reaching 1,000 such viewers in the final season of “Seinfeld.””