How Much Does a Dealership Video Commercial Cost?
· AutoDealerAudio
Video quotes for dealerships range wildly — a local freelancer might quote a few hundred dollars, a full agency might quote five figures for a single spot, and your TV station may offer "free" production bundled into a media buy. The spread isn't arbitrary; it reflects very different scopes of work. Here's how the pricing actually breaks down and what a dealership should expect to pay for creative it can run this month.
What a dealership video costs at AutoDealerAudio
A single cinematic promotional video is $995 as a one-off project. Dealerships producing video regularly usually move to a plan: Video Creative at $1,695/month for eight videos every month, or the Creative Department plan at $2,495/month, which includes eight cinematic videos plus four additional flexible creative productions, Meet The Staff portrait optimization and a custom sonic branding jingle under one monthly retainer. Multi-rooftop groups run on the Dealer Group Creative Partner plan at $5,995/month, which covers multiple stores and priority turnaround.
What actually drives the price
The biggest cost driver is not the length of the finished video — it's how much of it has to be captured versus generated. Our approach uses your dealership's provided materials and publicly available images and logos from your website to generate high-end cinematic footage with advanced AI video production software — a fraction of the cost of a multi-day location shoot with a crew, lighting, and on-camera talent. After that, price moves with the number of finished cuts and aspect ratios, narration, licensed music, motion graphics and lower-thirds, and how quickly you need the finished file.
Why "free" station production isn't free
Media partners frequently include production in a buy. What you get is usually a template the station reuses across many advertisers, produced by a team whose job is to fill the placement, not to build a creative strategy for your store. The cost shows up later, as spots that look like every other dealer ad in the market. That tradeoff is worth understanding before you accept bundled production — we cover it in Should Your TV Station Produce Your Dealership Video?
Cost per use, not cost per project
The right way to evaluate a dealership video budget is cost per placement, not cost per file. One production that yields a broadcast cut, a YouTube pre-roll cut, vertical social cuts, a website hero loop and in-store display content is spread across every channel you already pay to reach. A $995 video that runs across five channels for a month costs less per impression than most single-channel media line items on the same invoice.
How to budget it
Most single-rooftop dealerships that advertise consistently land between $1,000 and $2,000 a month for all creative production — video, radio and jingle work combined — which is typically a small fraction of what they spend on media placement. If your media budget is materially larger than your creative budget, the constraint on performance is usually the creative, not the buy.
For the audio side of the same question, see How Much Does a Dealership Radio Commercial Cost? or review full scope on our dealership video production page.