What a video ad costs in time and money

Ask what a video ad costs and the honest answer is "it depends on how you make it," which helps nobody. A better answer is a short list of cost lines you can fill in with your own numbers. Once you have that list, you can compare any two ways of making an ad fairly, including making one with Clipelle. This article gives you the list and then shows where Clipelle changes the math and where it does not.

The four cost lines of any video ad

Every ad, however it is made, has the same four lines.

People's time. Someone writes a brief, someone writes a script, someone records or films, someone edits, and someone asks for changes. Even when all of those people are you, the time is real. Count it in hours.

Money paid out. Freelancers, a creator, a studio, props, a product sample shipped somewhere, software you pay for. Count it in whatever you paid.

Waiting. The calendar time between "we should make an ad for this" and the ad being live. This line has no price tag, but it costs: a season you missed, a test you ran two weeks later than you could have, a product that sat in stock while you waited for footage.

The redo. What it costs to change one thing afterward. If the hook is wrong and changing it means another recording session, the redo costs almost as much as the original. If changing it means editing a sentence and clicking a button, it costs very little. This line decides how many versions you will really make.

A worked example with your numbers

Take the last video ad you made. Fill in these placeholders:

• X = the money you paid out for it.
• H = the hours of your own time, or your team's.
• R = what an hour of that time is worth to you.
• D = the calendar days from idea to live.
• V = the number of usable versions you got out of it.

The cost of that ad was X + H × R. The cost per version was (X + H × R) ÷ V. For most small shops, V is 1, so the two numbers are the same.

Now the redo question. If you wanted a second hook for that same ad, what would it have cost? If the answer is "most of X and H again," then your real cost per test was high, and that is probably why you did not test much. If the answer is "an afternoon," you are in a better position than most.

Keep those numbers. They are the baseline for everything below.

What changes with Clipelle

Clipelle makes a finished vertical ad from one product photo and two or three sentences about the product. Here is how that lands on the four lines.

People's time

The form takes a few minutes: a photo or a product page link, the product name, a short description, a length, and a few choices such as the presenter and the tone. If you turn on "Review script first," add the time to read three hooks, pick one and edit the words. That is the whole input. There is no brief, no recording, no editing session.

Money paid out

Clipelle counts in credits. A Standard ad uses 2 credits per second of video, so a 30-second Standard ad is 60 credits and a 60-second one is 120. Premium presenter quality, with more natural head and hand movement and the best lip-sync, costs more per second. Before you start, the form shows the estimate in credits and in dollars for the exact combination you picked. After the run, the project page shows the real amount spent next to that estimate. Plans include a monthly amount of credits; the current numbers are on the pricing page and they are not repeated here so this article does not go stale.

One more fact for the money line: after you verify your e-mail you get 30 free credits, with no card: enough for one 10-second Standard ad. It is a fair way to put a real number on the "people's time" line before you decide anything.

Waiting

A typical ad is ready in minutes, and you can leave the page while it runs. The project page shows each step as Waiting, Processing, Completed or Failed. If something fails, you get a plain-language explanation and a Retry button. The calendar line goes from days to the same afternoon.

The redo

This is where the math changes most. A second hook, a different tone, a longer version or another language of presenter voice is a new project with one setting changed. It costs that ad's credits again, not a reshoot. The script's hard word limit of about 2.5 words per second (75 words at 30 seconds) also means a redo never turns into a rewrite of a long piece; it is a short piece of text you can read in under a minute.

Put the same placeholders on a Clipelle ad: X is the credits from the estimate, H is minutes rather than hours, D is the same day, and V is as many as you choose to make. Then compare per version with your baseline.

What Clipelle does not take off the bill

A fair comparison includes the lines that stay.

• Media spend. Clipelle makes the ad; it does not launch or manage it. Whatever you pay the platforms to show it is unchanged.
• The product photo. A good photo makes a good product clip, and that photo has to exist. If you have none, you still need to take one.
• Your thinking. Who the ad is for, what problem it solves and what the offer is still have to come from you. The form has a Direction field for the audience and emphasis and an Offer line for the deal, but the content of both is yours.
• The landing page. The call to action is spoken by the presenter, and the viewer still has to land somewhere that delivers on it.
• Human review. The automatic script is good at structure and length. Whether it says what you would say is your call, which is what "Review script first" is for.

The lines people forget

The cost of not testing. If your redo is expensive, you run one version and hope. Every version you did not make is a test you did not run. Testing ad creatives with small variations explains how to make that cheap once the redo is cheap.

The cost of a wrong ad running. A creative with the wrong message spends your media budget just as fast as a good one. The cheaper it is to replace, the sooner you stop paying for the wrong one.

The cost of the scope creep. A shoot that was going to be one ad becomes a day of shooting "while we're at it." Count the whole day.

How to compare two ways fairly

Use this checklist when you put Clipelle, or anything else, next to your baseline:

1. Same length. A 30-second ad against a 30-second ad.
2. Same number of versions. If one way gives you three hooks for the price, compare per version.
3. Include your own hours at the rate you chose.
4. Include the redo as a separate line, because it decides how many versions you will actually make.
5. Include the waiting as days, even without a price.
6. Leave media spend out of both sides, or put it on both sides.

A sensible first step

Use your free credits on a 10-second ad to measure your own time line. Ten seconds is about 25 words of script, which is enough to see the hook, the product clip, the presenter and the captions working together, and short enough to judge in a minute. Then make your first real decision with the first-ad checklist open, knowing exactly what each line will cost you.