Budget template
A commercial production budget template for an AI film and its stills
For the marketing lead or agency producer who has a traditional commercial budget template, is budgeting an AI-made commercial and the campaign photos around it, and needs to know which lines still apply.
The short answer
An AI commercial keeps the budget lines that pay for ideas and finishing: creative, direction, editorial, music, sound, finishing and versions. It drops the lines that pay for a shoot day: crew, locations, studio, equipment, props, wardrobe and most talent fees. It adds lines for generating video and stills, for the extra review generated footage needs, and for checking the rights on models, music and voice. Media, the cost of airing the ad, stays a separate budget.
The standard form
The AICP bid form, read for an AI production
US production companies bid commercials on the AICP bid form. Its 2019 revision put production and post-production on one form, with sections lettered A to X; sections A to N stayed essentially unchanged, and Q to W took over the post-production sections. Here is what happens to each section when every frame is generated:
| AICP section | Pays for | In an AI commercial |
|---|---|---|
| A, B: Prep crew, shoot crew | The people on set and before it | Dropped. The studio’s creative and generation team replaces them |
| C, D: Prep and wrap, locations | Scouting, permits, location fees | Dropped |
| E: Props, wardrobe and animals | Everything bought or rented for the set | Dropped, except shipping the product for reference photos |
| F: Studio costs | Stage and studio rental | Dropped |
| G, H: Art department | Set design and build | Becomes the brand-world stage: world bible, character sheets, key frames |
| I, J: Equipment, media | Cameras, lights, drives | Dropped. Generation fees take their place |
| L: Director’s fees | The director | Kept. Someone still directs every shot |
| M, N: Talent, talent expenses | Actors and their costs | Mostly dropped for generated people; kept for a real person’s likeness or voice |
| P: Usage | Where and how long the ad may run | Kept, for music, voice and any real likeness |
| Q to W: Editorial, social versions, audio, finishing | Post-production | Kept in full |
| X: Visual effects, design, animation | Design, animation, VFX and interactive studios that bid in their own format | Where an AI studio’s own-format quote fits |
The template
An AI campaign budget, line by line
Copy these lines into your own sheet. The first column is the line; the last is a published price where one exists, so you can sanity-check a quote.
| Line | What it pays for | How it is priced | Published reference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Creative and script | The idea, script, beat sheet | Studio fee | Quoted |
| Brand world and casting | World bible, character sheets, approved key frames | Studio fee | Quoted |
| Video generation | Every take, kept or thrown away | Per second of video | Veo 3.1 $0.40 a second with audio at 1080p; Veo 3.1 Fast $0.12; Gemini Omni Flash about $0.10 at 720p |
| Stills and first frames | Key visual, campaign photos, frames to animate | Per image, plus any tool plan | Nano Banana 2 $0.067 per 1K image; Nano Banana Pro $0.134 |
| Voice | Voiceover | AI voice plan or a voice actor | ElevenLabs Starter $6 a month includes a commercial license; the free plan does not |
| Music | A licensed track | Per use | Soundstripe: $199 for paid social and digital ads; $1,249 and up for TV, radio and connected TV |
| Edit, sound, grade | Cut, mix, one grade across every shot | Studio fee | Quoted |
| Versions | Cutdowns, ratios, languages, captions | Per version | Quoted |
| Review rounds | Brand, legal, MLR sign-off | Time | Set the number of rounds in the contract |
| Rights check | Model terms, music, voice, likeness | Time | Ask for it in writing |
| Media | Airtime and paid placement | Separate budget | Not a production line |
The market
What commercials cost to make, filmed and with AI
Published ranges help you tell a normal quote from an odd one. For filmed TV commercials, D-MAK Productions (June 2026) publishes industry ranges of about USD 5,000 to 15,000 for a basic local spot, 15,000 to 50,000 for a polished 30-second spot, 50,000 to 150,000 or more for larger campaigns with actors and several locations, and 150,000 to 500,000 or more for national work, all before airtime.
AI studios publish lower figures. Versely's September 2026 compilation lists USD 2,500 and up for a 15 to 60 second hero spot (ArcaneWiz), USD 3,500 and up for a 60-second cinematic AI film (Gisteo), GBP 15,000 to 45,000 per broadcast asset in one market (Myth Labs), and larger spots around EUR 200,000 (The Dor Brothers). One low-cost example is the Kalshi ad that aired during the 2025 NBA Finals: about $2,000 and two days, and 300 to 400 generations for 15 usable clips (Mashable, June 2025).
Every frame Ruminate X delivers is made with generative AI. There are no film crews, sets or location shoots. Ruminate X quotes each commercial from the brief and does not publish a price list. The four price levels for AI video, and what each buys, are in how much AI video production costs.
An example
A worked example: one film, its cutdowns and 30 stills
A made-up brand launches one product with a 30-second film, a 15 and a 6-second cutdown in 16:9 and 9:16, and 30 campaign stills. The studio lines are quotes, so they stay blank here. The lines with published prices look like this:
| Line | Assumption | Money out |
|---|---|---|
| Video generation, 16:9 | 12 kept shots; 25 takes per kept shot, near the Kalshi ratio; 8-second takes at 1080p = 2,400 seconds | $288 on Veo 3.1 Fast; $960 on Veo 3.1 |
| Video generation, 9:16 | The same 12 shots generated again in 9:16 instead of cropped | $288 to $960 again |
| Stills | 30 kept stills at 3 to 14 renders each, one month of Overs Pro, planning | $36 to $118 |
| Music | One track for paid social and digital ads | $199 |
| Music, if it airs on TV | All Media license, three months national | $1,249 and up |
| Voice | AI voiceover with a commercial license | $6 a month and up |
| Creative, direction, edit, sound, grade, versions, review | The studio’s quote | Quoted |
The published lines add up to a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. The rest of the budget is people: the idea, the direction, the takes someone chooses and the ones they throw away, the edit and the review rounds. That is where AI commercial quotes differ, and it is the line to ask a studio to explain.
The stills line
Where Overs comes in
The stills line is where the numbers move most, and it is the line Overs was built for. Overs, the sister product from the same founder, is an AI tool that makes product and campaign photos that match a brand, without a photo shoot. It grew out of the process 100creatives used to make hundreds of photos a week for hundreds of brands.
Here is the 30-photo set from the example, priced three ways. At soona's published prices it comes to $2,026; with a hired crew for one day, $13,790 before usage fees, a producer or props. Both figures are from Overs' guide to what a product photo shoot costs, for 10 white-background, 10 lifestyle and 10 on-model photos. On Overs, the same set comes to about $36 to $118: one month of Pro at $29, about 20 cents of planning for each of three runs, and model fees for 90 renders on Nano Banana 2 at the low end (3 per usable photo) or 420 on GPT Image 2 at the high end (14 per usable photo). Those render counts are the range from 4 campaigns 100creatives made in 2026.
What the number leaves out is someone's time: at 8 renders per usable photo, choosing 30 means looking at about 240 images. And a real shoot still wins for some shots, such as fine label text on a reflective bottle. Overs shows the shot plan and an estimated cost before anything renders, so the budget line is known before the money is spent. The free plan makes 40 photos a month; Pro is $29 a month and Team $99 (Overs pricing, September 2026), and on every plan the AI is billed to your own OpenRouter key with no markup from Overs. Price your stills line on Overs' free plan at www.overs.studio before you sign a shoot.
Should Ruminate X take this budget?
Hire Ruminate X if
- A marketing lead with a budget for a finished commercial, who wants the shoot lines gone and the creative lines kept.
- An agency producer who needs an AI production partner to bid a client spot line by line.
- A brand that needs the film and the campaign stills from one world, on one budget.
Hire someone else if
- The budget covers only model fees: make it in-house with a self-serve tool, and count your own team’s hours.
- The spot needs actors, a real location or a product demonstration filmed for real: bid it as a shoot on the AICP form.
- You need only stills: a photo studio, or Overs, costs less than a film studio.
Questions buyers ask
What is a commercial production budget template?
In the US the standard one is the AICP bid form from the Association of Independent Commercial Producers. Its 2019 revision put production and post-production on one form, in lettered sections from A to X: crew, locations, studio, art department, equipment, director, talent, usage, editorial, social versions, audio, finishing and visual effects. Production companies bid on it, so agencies and brands can compare bids line by line.
How much does it cost to make a commercial?
Filmed TV commercials are published at about USD 5,000 to 15,000 for a basic local spot, 15,000 to 50,000 for a professional 30-second spot and 150,000 to 500,000 or more for national work, before airtime (D-MAK Productions, June 2026). AI studios publish lower figures, such as USD 2,500 and up for a 15 to 60 second hero spot (ArcaneWiz, via Versely, September 2026). Ruminate X quotes each commercial from the brief.
Which budget lines does an AI commercial not need?
The lines that pay for a shoot day: shoot crew, location fees and permits, studio rental, camera and lighting rental, props and wardrobe bought for the set, physical media, and most talent fees when the people on screen are generated. The creative, direction, editorial, sound, finishing and versioning lines stay.
What new lines does an AI commercial add?
Generation fees for video takes and for stills or first frames, billed per second or per image by the model makers; a brand-world stage with character sheets and approved key frames; more review rounds, because generated shots are checked one by one against the boards and the product; and a rights check on the models, music and voice used.
How much does music licensing cost for a commercial?
It depends on where the ad runs. Soundstripe's single-song licenses are $199 for paid social and digital ads, $399 and up when out-of-home is added, and $1,249 and up for TV, radio and connected TV with national distribution for three months (Soundstripe, September 2026). Subscription plans often stop short of TV: Epidemic Sound's Pro plan covers digital ads and excludes TV ads.
Does Ruminate X publish its prices?
No. Ruminate X quotes each brand film and commercial from the brief, because the price depends on length, the number of scenes, how exactly the product has to be reproduced, versions and review rounds. Send the film type, length, channels and deadline through the contact page for a quote.
Send the budget you have
Send the brief, the channels, the versions you need and the budget range, and get a quote line by line.