Validated pricing intelligence across every channel.
Negotiated pricing intelligence built on 40+ years of actual transaction data — across CTV, streaming audio, podcasting, linear TV, local TV, cable, radio, and out-of-home. The market pricing benchmark agencies, broadcasters, and investors use to know what inventory is genuinely trading for.
THE PROBLEM
Media pricing is fragmented. Across every channel.
Without a normalized benchmark, buying teams negotiate on instinct and planners budget on rate cards that aren't real.
No reliable benchmark across channels
Rate cards reflect what's listed. Real prices live in actual buys — and they vary wildly by daypart, market, audience, format, and content category.
Negotiation without leverage
The seller knows the market. Without a validated benchmark, the buyer doesn't — and the negotiation tilts before it starts.
Cross-channel comparisons break
A $40 CPM on CTV, a $30 CPP on local TV, a $25 CPM on podcasting. They only compare if the data is normalized to the same audience, ad length, and methodology. Most isn't.
THE SQADCOSTS PORTFOLIO
Three layers of pricing intelligence. One normalised benchmark.
National TV. Local media. And — as of 2026 — locally targeted digital, streaming audio, and podcasting. Each with its own validated transaction history, all rolling up to a single normalised pricing layer.
01
SQADCosts National
National linear TV pricing intelligence. Negotiated CPMs across networks, genres, and programs. Upfront vs scatter pricing. Demographic and daypart granularity. The pricing benchmark for national TV buying.
02
SQADCosts Local
Local-market pricing intelligence across local TV, cable, Hispanic TV, radio, and out-of-home. Market, daypart, demo, and station-level benchmarking — the pricing layer for local media buying.
03
NEW
Local Digital Extension
The 2026 extension of SQADCosts Local into geo-targeted digital. CPM benchmarks for locally targeted CTV, streaming audio, podcasting, and digital video — normalised into the same like-for-like methodology that powers Linear and Local.
THE METHODOLOGY
Not one price.
A negotiation range.
Every SQADCosts benchmark is published as three tiers — Average, Low, and High. Not a single market CPM, but the realistic envelope of what's being transacted. Buyers see leverage. Sellers see positioning. Planners see budgeting ranges. The framework has become an industry-standard reference for how pricing intelligence is consumed.
Because pricing doesn't work as a point estimate — it works as a negotiation envelope.
WHAT IT DOES
Transaction-level pricing intelligence. Normalised across the market.
Validated pricing data
40+ years of reported transactions across linear TV, local media, and digital — aggregated, normalized, and benchmarked. Not surveys. Not rate cards. The negotiated rates the market actually reports.
Negotiation without leverage
Normalized benchmarks across every channel and market — same audience target, same ad length, same content category. Cross-channel and cross-market comparisons that genuinely add up, not approximations that compound error.
Embedded at plan creation
SQADCosts data is built into MediaTools and Lumina natively. Planning teams see validated benchmarks as they build the plan — not after it's been submitted to finance, and not as a lookup in a separate tool.
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The pricing benchmark the market actually transacts on.
See how SQADCosts changes the way your team plans, buys, negotiates, and audits — across every channel and every market.
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