Radio Advertising Cost in Houston, Plus TV: Real 2026 Rates

Radio advertising cost in Houston runs from about $25 for a :30 in a weekend daytime slot to $225 to $330 for a drive-time spot locked to a specific day on a top FM station. A big news-talk AM station has charged $550 for a non-preemptible :60 in morning drive. On TV, a :30 on a top Houston affiliate ran roughly $200 to $1,400 around the local news and $2,000 to $3,500 in primetime in early 2024.

All of those come from station paperwork filed with the FCC, and all of them are airtime only. Production, frequency and the length of the flight decide what you really spend, so we’ll go channel by channel and finish with the smallest test budget we’d trust.

How much does radio advertising cost in Houston?

Stations don’t post rate cards. The best public evidence is the FCC’s online public inspection file, where stations have to upload political ad orders. We pulled three Houston filings from 2024 and read the line items (we’ve left the advertisers’ names out). Where an order came from a candidate inside an election window, the station had to charge its lowest rate, so read those lines as a floor.

The country and classic rock figures come from a political advertiser’s 2024 schedule on KKBQ-FM and KGLK-FM: 67 spots over six weeks for $5,005, or $74.70 a spot on average. The KTRH line is from a fall 2024 KTRH political order. As a cross-check, FitSmallBusiness puts the average Houston :30 at $264.

Why the same station quotes $65 and $310

On that KKBQ schedule, a midday spot floating Monday through Wednesday cost $65. The same hours locked to Tuesdays cost $210. Pinning a spot to a day costs more than letting it rotate, and the weeks before an election push every rate up.

A few other things move a Houston radio quote:

• Station size. In the Radio Online’s Houston-Galveston ratings page for September 2026, iHeartMedia’s KODA-FM led with a 10.7 share, and KGLK and KKBQ both sat in the top five.
• Language. The same page puts the Hispanic population at about 2.26 million of 6.2 million in the metro, and Univision’s KOVE-FM ranks in the top 10.
• Preemptible vs fixed. Cheaper spots can get bumped by a higher bidder; KTRH’s $550 was non-preemptible.
• Market size. Nielsen Audio moved Houston-Galveston up to the No. 5 radio market with the Fall 2025 survey, per Country Aircheck.

How much does a TV commercial cost in Houston?

Houston is the sixth-largest TV market in the country, with about 2.8 million TV homes, according to Nexstar, citing Nielsen, and broadcast prices reflect it.

The clearest look we found is a February 2024 KTRK invoice in the FCC public file for ABC13, placed in early 2024 by a political advertiser that was not itself a candidate. That distinction matters. Under the FCC’s political programming fact sheet, only legally qualified candidates get the “lowest unit charge,” and only in the 45 days before a primary or 60 days before a general. Other buyers pay commercial rates, so these sit close to market prices during a month of heavy political demand.

The two invoices from that buyer total more than $250,000 gross over about four weeks. Ten spots in the 6 p.m. news alone came to $12,000.

Rates move weekly, too. The 6 p.m. slot went from $1,000 to $1,200 inside that flight, so ask for the grid by week.

Houston TV advertising rates on cable

Most local businesses start TV on cable because you can buy just part of the market. In Houston, cable ad time is sold by Comcast’s ad division, previously called Comcast Spotlight and then Effectv, now Comcast Advertising. Its chamber listing with the Houston Northwest Chamber gives an office on Pitkin Road in Spring, 77386, and claims reach to 90 percent of Houston households. It has sold other providers’ local inventory here too; MediaPost reported it taking over AT&T U-verse ad sales in Houston in 2011.

Cable is sold by network and zone, so a Kingwood business doesn’t pay for Sugar Land. The published ranges are vendor estimates:

• Vibe’s 2026 local TV cost guide puts local cable CPMs at $5 to $15 and monthly packages at $500 to $2,000 in mid-size markets.
• Adwave says agencies and cable providers often require $5,000 to $25,000 minimum campaign spends.

Both companies sell self-serve streaming, so weigh their cable numbers accordingly, and on the first call ask the Comcast rep for the zone minimum and a streaming quote alongside it.

Streaming TV advertising cost

Streaming, or connected TV, is bought by CPM, the price per thousand impressions, and you can target a handful of ZIP codes instead of the whole market. Vibe’s 2026 local TV cost guide estimates open-exchange CTV CPMs at $15 to $30 before an 18 to 30 percent markup for platform fees, data and verification, and says self-serve platforms start around $50 a day, about $1,400 to $1,500 for a four-week flight. Comcast added its own entry point, Universal Ads, for smaller advertisers in January 2025, per eMarketer.

Run the math before you buy. At a $30 effective CPM, $3,000 buys about 100,000 impressions: five views each across 20,000 target households, or half a view each across 200,000, which nobody will remember.

Streaming is the most targeted way onto the big screen, and it usually costs more per thousand than broadcast. Our post on whether streaming TV ads are worth it covers when that trade makes sense.

How much do Spotify and streaming audio ads cost?

Streaming audio has the lowest entry price of anything in this guide.

• Spotify. Self-serve campaigns start at 250 in your local currency, per Spotify’s own help center. Audio ads run up to 30 seconds, and Spotify’s audio specs recommend no more than 65 words for a :30. Spotify’s how-it-works page says production through its tool is free.
• Pandora. AudioGo, the AdsWizz self-serve tool for Pandora, starts at $250 with pay-as-you-go billing. Campaigns run by SiriusXM Media’s own team need a $10,000 minimum.
• iHeartRadio. Its streaming inventory is usually sold by the same local reps who sell iHeart’s Houston stations. Ask for both on one quote.

On price, Influencer Marketing Hub says Spotify CPMs typically run $15 to $25, and FitSmallBusiness lists Pandora audio at about $20 per thousand. A $1,500 month at $20 buys roughly 75,000 plays, with room in each :30 for one idea and one call to action.

How much does a local TV commercial cost to make?

Then there’s making the thing. Typical production ranges:

Simulmedia’s 2026 production guide adds that music licensing can run $1,000 to $30,000 and talent $500 to $50,000 a day. The Houston figures are from BeverlyBoy Productions.

Our habit is to shoot once and cut many. A half-day shoot can yield a :30 for cable, a :15 for streaming, vertical cutdowns for Meta and TikTok and stills for the website. For radio, a station-produced spot is cheap and sounds like every other spot in the break; on a flight longer than a month, a custom script from a creative team usually earns back its cost.

Reach, frequency and GRPs in plain English

Reach is how many different people or homes saw or heard your ad at least once. Frequency is how many times, on average, each of them did. A rating point is 1 percent of the audience you’re measuring. With about 2.8 million TV homes in Houston, one household rating point is roughly 28,000 homes.

GRPs (gross rating points) add up the ratings of every spot: a 2-rated spot run ten times is 20 GRPs. They also equal reach times frequency, so 40 percent of homes reached 2.5 times on average is 100 GRPs.

A hypothetical: a 10 p.m. news spot costs $1,400 and earns a 3 household rating. That’s about 84,000 homes, roughly $16.70 per thousand. Cheap per thousand, except you’re paying for Katy, Pearland and Baytown when you only serve Magnolia.

Radio uses AQH (average quarter-hour audience) in place of ratings, but the math is the same. Ask every rep for the CPM in your target age group; a $40 overnight spot nobody hears is the expensive one.

There’s no fixed rule on frequency. We plan for at least three exposures a week per person for four weeks or more before judging anything; thinner schedules rarely produce a readable result.

Minimum test budget for each channel

Our working numbers for a test that can show a result in one part of Greater Houston. These are planning rules of thumb, not published rates.

Broadcast costs more because you’re paying for the whole metro. Twenty radio spots a week at $75 to $150 lands in that range quickly, and one TV week mixing daytime, morning news and a few evening news spots at KTRK’s 2024 rates clears $10,000.

If those numbers are a big share of your budget, start with streaming. Our guide to setting a marketing budget covers how to size the pot first.

How to buy and track radio and TV in Houston

Direct, rep firm or agency

Direct means calling the station or Comcast. That works for one station, though every rep will tell you theirs is the right one.

Agencies buy across stations and compare them on cost per thousand. Broadcast still runs on a 15 percent agency commission built into the gross rate. You can see it in the filings: the KTRK invoice shows $160,900 gross and a $24,135 commission, and a fall 2024 KTRH political order shows $46,200 gross with $6,930 commission. Both are exactly 15 percent, and that commission is often baked into the rate whether you use an agency or not. Ask the station what you’d pay direct.

Check the FCC file yourself

Before you negotiate, search the station’s call letters at publicfiles.fcc.gov and open Political Files for a recent year. You’ll find invoices like a second KTRK invoice from the same buyer. Keep the rule in mind: a candidate’s order inside the election window runs at the lowest unit charge, so treat it as a floor. Orders from non-candidate political buyers sit closer to what a business would pay.

Track it like any other ad

Broadcast gives you no clicks, so set up measurement before the first spot runs:

• A dedicated phone number read in the spot and shown on screen. Our call tracking guide walks through the setup.
• A vanity URL like yoursite.com/radio that redirects to a page with UTM tags, so Google Analytics shows the visits.
• Branded search lift. Record branded queries in Search Console and Google Ads for four weeks before the flight, then compare. It’s usually the clearest signal you’ll get.
• An offer code that only exists on air (“mention KTRH”).
• Holdout areas for cable and streaming: run in some zones or ZIPs and not others, then compare calls and leads.

When broadcast beats digital for a local business, and when it doesn’t

Radio still has the reach. AM/FM reaches 93 percent of U.S. adults each month and took 61 percent of ad-supported audio listening time in the fourth quarter of 2025, according to a Katz Radio Group analysis of Nielsen and Edison data. In a metro where people spend an hour a day on I-45, I-10 and the Grand Parkway, that reach is real.

Broadcast earns its price when most adults in the metro are possible customers (injury law, HVAC, roofing after hail, car dealers, big hiring pushes), when several locations spread you across the region, or when you want Spanish-language reach at scale. It also helps once search and your Business Profile already catch demand and the job is getting more people to look you up by name.

It’s the wrong buy if you serve a few ZIP codes, sell to a narrow group like B2B buyers, or one month of broadcast would eat most of your annual budget. Streaming audio and CTV in your ZIPs, with Google Ads catching the searches they create, will beat a metro-wide schedule. Billboards sit somewhere in the middle; see our Houston billboard cost guide.

To get started, request two four-week proposals, one from a radio station whose audience matches your customers and one from Comcast’s office in Spring, each with CPMs for your target age group. Check the station’s political file before you answer.

Then sort out measurement, which is where most broadcast tests fall apart. If your Google Ads account mixes branded and generic searches in one campaign, a radio flight can lift your name searches and you’ll never see it. That’s one of the first things we look at in a free Ad Spend Leak Check: we record a walkthrough of your account and tell you whether your brand traffic is separated cleanly enough to measure a flight against. When you’re ready to plan the flight itself, our CTV, streaming and radio team buys and tracks it.

Frequently asked questions

How much does a 30-second radio ad cost in Houston?

Public FCC filings show Houston FM stations charging roughly $25 to $70 for a :30 in weekend or midweek daytime rotations and $225 to $330 for drive time locked to a specific day. A major news-talk AM station charged $550 for a non-preemptible :60 in morning drive. FitSmallBusiness lists the Houston average :30 at $264. Rates shift with season and demand.

How much does a local TV commercial cost?

Plan for two costs. Production for a local :30 usually runs $1,500 to $15,000 depending on crew, talent and music. Airtime on a top Houston station ran about $200 to $450 for daytime, $800 to $1,400 for local news and $2,000 to $3,500 for primetime in early 2024 filings. Cable zones and streaming TV cost less and can target part of the metro.

How much do Spotify ads cost?

Spotify's self-serve tool requires a minimum budget of 250 in your local currency, and its free production tool can make the ad for you. Third-party guides put Spotify CPMs at about $15 to $25 per thousand ads served. Audio ads run up to 30 seconds, and you can target by location, so a Houston business can run a small test without buying the whole market.

Is radio or TV better for a small business?

For most small businesses with one location, radio and streaming are the more affordable test, and cable or streaming TV beats broadcast TV because you can buy only your area. Broadcast TV makes sense when most adults in the metro could be customers and you can afford three or four weeks at steady frequency. Track every option with a dedicated number and branded search.

What is a GRP in advertising?

A gross rating point is one percent of a target audience, added up across every ad in a schedule. Ten spots that each reach 2 percent of Houston TV homes total 20 GRPs. GRPs also equal reach times frequency. Stations use GRPs and cost per point to price and compare schedules, so ask for both on any proposal.

Written by Sean Melton

Sean Melton is the founder of First Byte, a digital marketing agency in The Woodlands, TX. A former global CMO of a $250M software company, he has spent his career inside the businesses he markets. His team runs paid social, search, CTV and creative for brands like Equinox, Kroger and Viceroy, and shares what works here.