If your business is at the point where TV is on the table, you’ve probably realized something uncomfortable: the people who can help you make a TV commercial that actually works are not the same people who run your social media, write your blog posts, or manage your Google Ads. Television is its own discipline. The production standards are higher, the buying market is different, the creative requirements are sharper, and the cost of getting it wrong is meaningful enough that “we’ll figure it out” stops being an acceptable plan.
So the question becomes who you hire to do it. The three paths most businesses consider are a dedicated TV ad agency, a generalist marketing agency that offers TV among other services, and producing the spot in-house with freelance help. Each of those paths has a real case for and against it, and the right choice depends less on price than on what the business is actually trying to accomplish with the TV spend.
What a TV ad agency does that other firms don’t
A TV ad agency is, at its core, a creative production shop with broadcast expertise. The work covers strategy (who the spot is for and what it needs to do), creative development (concept, script, storyboard), full production (directors, talent, crew, locations, equipment), post-production (editing, color, audio, graphics, finishing), and broadcast delivery (formatting and trafficking to stations or networks). A real TV ad agency owns or has tight working relationships with every step in that chain, which is what allows the project to move predictably from kickoff to on-air.
The thing TV ad agencies do that generalist firms often can’t is hold the creative and the production accountable to broadcast standards. A spot that looks fine on Instagram can fall apart on a 65-inch TV. Lighting that read as moody on a laptop screen reads as underexposed in a living room. Audio that sounded clean in editing sounds muddy through a TV’s downward-firing speakers. The agencies that produce TV at scale have built their workflows around catching those problems before the spot airs, because the cost of fixing them after broadcast is significant.
The other thing dedicated TV agencies bring is talent. Not the on-camera kind, although that matters too. The behind-the-camera talent — directors, directors of photography, gaffers, sound mixers, editors, colorists — who have done hundreds or thousands of broadcast spots and know exactly what a TV ad needs to look and sound like to compete in the break with national advertisers. That experience compresses the timeline and raises the floor on quality in ways that aren’t always obvious from the outside.
What you get from a generalist marketing agency
A generalist agency offers TV as one of many services, alongside digital marketing, social, SEO, and brand work. The advantage is integration. When the agency that runs your digital advertising also produces your TV spot, the messaging stays consistent, the creative assets get reused across channels, and the measurement framework can connect TV exposure to downstream digital behavior. For brands that are running TV as part of a broader multi-channel campaign, that integration is genuinely valuable.
The trade-off is depth on the production side. A generalist agency may have strong creative leadership and excellent strategists, but the actual production work often gets handled by freelance crews or outsourced production partners. That can absolutely work — many generalist agencies produce excellent spots through outsourced production — but it adds a layer of coordination, and the agency’s ability to hit a tight schedule or pivot mid-production depends on the strength of their outside relationships.
The right way to evaluate a generalist agency for TV work is to look at their actual TV portfolio. Not the campaign case studies that show TV spots as part of a broader story. The actual TV spots themselves, watched on a TV-sized screen. If the work holds up, the integration advantage is real. If it doesn’t, the integration is selling something the agency can’t fully deliver.
What in-house production with freelance help actually requires
The third path is producing the spot internally, hiring a freelance director and crew for the shoot, and editing in-house or with a freelance editor. On paper this looks like the cheapest option, and for some businesses it can be. The honest version is that it requires someone on the team to function as the producer, the creative director, and the project manager all at once, with enough broadcast experience to make the right calls when things go sideways.
If the business already has that person — a marketing director with real video production background, an in-house creative lead who has shipped TV work before, a founder who used to work in production — the in-house path is viable and can produce good work for less money than an agency engagement. If the business doesn’t have that person, the in-house path almost always costs more than it looks like it will, because the failure modes (a shoot that runs over budget, a spot that doesn’t meet broadcast specs, a creative concept that falls apart in execution) are expensive to recover from.
The other thing the in-house path doesn’t give you is the strategic layer. A freelance crew shows up to execute a creative brief. They don’t build the brief. They don’t push back when the brief is asking for the wrong thing. They don’t connect the spot to a broader media plan or a brand strategy. If the strategic thinking has already happened inside the business, that’s fine. If it hasn’t, the spot will reflect the gap.
The decision factors that actually matter
Once the three paths are on the table, the choice usually comes down to a few practical considerations. The first is how much TV work the business is going to do. A single spot to launch a campaign is a different decision than an ongoing TV presence that will need fresh creative every quarter. Agencies, especially dedicated TV agencies, get more cost-efficient as the relationship deepens because the discovery and creative groundwork amortizes across multiple spots. A one-off can sometimes be done more efficiently by a freelance crew working off a tight brief.
The second is how integrated the TV needs to be with the rest of the marketing. If TV is going to share creative with social, digital, out-of-home, and other formats, a single agency handling all of it has a real advantage. If TV is standalone and the rest of the marketing lives elsewhere, that integration is less valuable.
The third is how much the business can absorb if something goes wrong. A dedicated TV ad agency has process, redundancy, and accountability built in because they have to — their reputation depends on shipping reliable work. A freelance crew is doing their best, but if the lead camera operator gets sick the morning of the shoot, the recovery is on the producer (which is to say, on someone inside the business). That’s not a reason to avoid the freelance path, but it is a reason to know what you’re signing up for.
Working with Killerspots on TV creative
Killerspots has been producing television commercials since 1999. The work happens in-house through full TV commercial production — strategy, creative, directing, shooting in our Cincinnati studios or on location, editing, audio, finishing, and broadcast delivery, all under one roof. The agency model also covers the rest of the marketing mix, so the TV creative connects to audio production, digital, and broader campaign work without handoffs between firms.
What that means for a business that’s about to spend real money on television is that the spot gets produced by the same team that understands the larger marketing strategy, with no coordination tax between the creative and the rest of the channel mix. The work has been recognized with six Telly Awards over the agency’s history, including gold-tier wins, and it has been produced for brands ranging from local Cincinnati businesses to national clients.
Before you sign anything
Whichever path makes sense for your business, a few things are worth confirming before money changes hands. Get a written quote that breaks out creative development, production, post-production, and any usage or talent fees separately, so you can see where the money is going. Confirm who will be on set and who will be cutting the spot. Confirm how many rounds of revisions are included and what additional rounds cost. Confirm the deliverable formats and whether broadcast trafficking is included or separate. Confirm the timeline from kickoff to delivery and what happens if it slips.
None of those confirmations are unusual asks. Any firm that resists answering them clearly is telling you something important about how the project will run.
If you want to talk through what your TV spot should look like and which path makes sense for your business, get in touch with Killerspots or call (513) 270-2500. The first conversation is about the business and the campaign, not about pricing. Pricing follows once we know what we’re actually producing.
Frequently Asked Questions
What’s the difference between a TV ad agency and a video production company?
A video production company handles the technical and creative execution of producing a video, but typically doesn’t develop strategy, write briefs, or connect the spot to a broader campaign. A TV ad agency does all of that and the production. For a business that already has clear strategy and a finished script, a production company can deliver the spot well. For a business starting from a marketing goal rather than a finished concept, a TV ad agency provides the strategic layer the production company doesn’t.
How much does a TV commercial cost to produce?
TV commercial production cost varies based on creative complexity, talent, location, equipment, and post-production scope. A straightforward studio spot with one on-camera talent costs significantly less than a multi-location shoot with named talent, custom music, and extensive visual effects. The right way to think about budget isn’t a flat number, it’s matching the production value to the media buy. Spending heavily on production to run on a small media buy is a mismatch, and so is the opposite.
Should TV creative match what we’re running on digital and social?
Yes, with adaptation. The creative idea, brand voice, and core messaging should stay consistent across channels because consistency is what builds recognition. But TV is a different format with different pacing, different attention dynamics, and different production standards. Reusing a digital cut directly on television usually underperforms compared to a version produced with TV in mind. The right approach is a single creative concept produced in format-appropriate versions for each channel.
How long does it take to produce a TV commercial?
A standard TV commercial production timeline runs six to ten weeks from creative kickoff to broadcast-ready delivery. That covers strategy and creative development, scriptwriting and storyboarding, pre-production, the shoot, post-production, and final delivery. Faster turnarounds are possible for simpler concepts or rush jobs, but compressing the timeline usually means fewer creative iterations and less room to course-correct if early footage isn’t working.
Can a TV commercial be reused on other channels like YouTube or social?
It can, and it usually should be. A TV spot is an expensive piece of creative, and getting more surfaces out of it improves the return on the production investment. The right approach is to plan multi-channel use during pre-production, capturing additional footage and producing format-specific cuts for vertical social, square feeds, longer YouTube versions, and shorter teaser content. Doing that work upfront is much cheaper than going back to recut after the spot is delivered.
