Every video ad budget is really two budgets. Production is what it costs to make the ads. Media is what you pay a platform to show them. Small businesses often spend everything on one and starve the other: a beautiful video nobody sees, or a big ad spend behind a single tired creative.
Here's how to think about both, and how to plan so the money ends up behind ads that work.
Production: what making an ad really costs
The price of a short ad depends on who makes it and how. Some reference points from public price lists we surveyed in October 2026:
- A script only. Freelance marketplaces list scripts for a 15–60 second ad at roughly $15–45; a vetted writer with a round of revisions is more like $150–500.
- A creative strategist on retainer. In the US, monthly retainers commonly run from about $3,000 to $15,000.
- A filmed shoot. People, a location, equipment, editing and usage rights for whoever appears on camera. Prices vary too widely to quote, but the real cost is time: days of planning and shooting for each batch of ads.
The hidden costs are the ones people forget: revisions, versions for different formats, music licences, and re-shoots when one thing goes wrong.
Production on Facefluence: count seconds, not videos
Facefluence charges for seconds of finished video: 100 credits = 1 second. A 30-second ad is 3,000 credits. Scripts, the Producer, storyboards, captions and edits that need no new render cost nothing. If one shot needs fixing, only that shot's seconds are charged — and every video includes free re-renders of up to 30% of its seconds within 14 days.
The plans, before taxes:
| Plan | Price a month | Credits | About this many 30-second videos |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $49 | 10,000 | 3 |
| Pro | $129 | 35,000 | 11 |
| Business | $249 | 80,000 | 26 |
That works out to roughly $9–15 per finished 30-second video, depending on the plan. Shorter ads cost proportionally less: a 15-second ad is half the credits. Monthly credits don't roll over, so plan the month's videos to use them; top-ups cover busy months.
Media: budget for testing, then scaling
The single most common mistake in paid video is running one ad. You can't know in advance which hook, presenter or offer will work, and the differences between creatives are often larger than any targeting change you can make.
A simple structure:
1. A testing budget. Money you're prepared to spend to learn. Split it evenly across three to five variants of the same ad — usually different hooks with the same body — and run them to the same audience for the same period.
2. A decision rule, set in advance. Judge each variant by the result you actually want: cost per booking, per lead, per sale. Not likes, and not views alone. Decide before you start how much each variant may spend before you call it.
3. A scaling budget. Move most of the money to the winner. Keep a small slice testing new variants, because every winning ad eventually wears out — viewers see it too often and stop responding.
4. A refresh rhythm. Plan new creatives every few weeks rather than waiting for results to fall. With production priced per second, a fresh hook is a small cost; a stale ad is an expensive one.
A worked example
A neighbourhood bakery on the Pro plan ($129, 35,000 credits) plans its month:
- Launch week: one 20-second "new menu" ad with four different hooks — 4 × 2,000 credits = 8,000 credits.
- Weekly posts: four 15-second behind-the-scenes videos from the bakers' own phone clips — 4 × 1,500 = 6,000 credits.
- A genuine testimonial from a real Google review — 20 seconds, 2,000 credits.
- A 16:9 version of the winning launch ad for YouTube — re-rendered shot by shot, 2,000 credits.
- Room to spare: about 17,000 credits for a holiday promo, fixes beyond the free allowance, or a second round of hooks.
The media budget then goes mostly behind whichever launch hook wins its test.
Questions to ask any production option
- What exactly does one finished ad cost, including revisions and other formats?
- What happens if one shot is wrong — do you pay for the whole video again?
- How quickly can you get a new hook or a new offer into the same ad?
- Who owns the result, and can you use it in every placement you need?
- Does it come with what platforms and the law ask for — disclosure, provenance, genuine reviews only?
The cheapest ad isn't the one with the lowest price. It's the one you can afford to test, fix and replace until it works.