For advertisers
How much does website advertising cost in the UK?
Short answer: banner advertising on UK websites runs roughly £1–£5 per thousand viewable impressions depending on the audience. Here's what drives that, and what a real budget buys.
How display pricing works
Display ads are priced by CPM — cost per thousand impressions (the M is the Roman thousand). At a £2.50 CPM, a £100 budget buys 40,000 ad views. One thing to check before comparing numbers: whether you're paying for served impressions (the ad loaded somewhere, seen or not) or viewable ones (actually on screen). Networks selling served impressions look cheaper and often aren't — industry-wide, roughly a third of served display is never seen. We bill viewable only: at least half the ad on screen for a full second.
Typical UK rates by audience
The reader determines the rate. Indicative viewable CPMs on UK content in 2026:
- Legal, finance, property: £3–£5+ — each reader is worth a lot to those advertisers
- Health, trades, careers, automotive: £2.50–£3.50
- Home & garden, travel, technology, food: £2–£3
- News, sport, entertainment, hobbies: £1–£2.50
Against the big platforms: UK Facebook CPMs typically run £5–£10 and Google Display £2–£6 — but with 30–50% of programmatic spend absorbed by the ad-tech chain before it buys anything. Buying direct, all of your money buys ads.
What a real budget gets you
- £25 at a £2.50 CPM → 10,000 viewable impressions. A meaningful local test.
- £100/month → ~40,000 impressions — steady presence across a niche.
- £500/month → ~200,000 impressions — serious share of voice in one category.
What matters more than raw volume is fit: 10,000 impressions on sites your customers actually read outperforms 100,000 sprayed across the open web. It's why we let you target by content category and show you exactly which sites your ads ran on.
Costs people forget
Creative production (or don't — our builder makes your banner free in the browser), management fees if an agency runs it (nothing here is complicated enough to need one), and minimum commitments (we have none — pause any time, unspent balance stays yours). VAT applies on top of ad spend for UK businesses and is reclaimable as normal; your invoice arrives automatically.