On ITV1, a single ad break can last up to 3 minutes 50 seconds. That’s the limit set by Ofcom, the broadcasting regulator, and it applies to breaks in the middle of programmes on the main public service channels.
If you’re thinking about advertising, the rules behind that figure are worth a few minutes of your time. They explain why there’s only so much TV airtime to buy and why it’s priced the way it is, and they also tell you quite a lot about the company your advert will be keeping when it goes out.
The rules for ITV1
ITV1 is a public service channel, along with STV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and S4C, and those channels have the tightest advertising limits in UK television. They’re set out in Ofcom’s Code on the Scheduling of Television Advertising:
- A break within a programme can run for up to 3 minutes 50 seconds in total, and no more than 3 minutes 30 seconds of that can be adverts.
- Across the whole day, adverts can average no more than 7 minutes an hour.
- Between 6pm and 11pm, the average can rise to 8 minutes an hour.
- However it’s averaged out, you’ll never see more than 12 minutes of adverts in any one hour.
- Films are the exception, and the limit on how long a break can be doesn’t apply to them.
Because the hourly figures are averages, a channel has some freedom over where its advertising goes. It can carry less at quiet times of day and more when the audience is at its biggest, as long as the averages hold and no single hour goes over the ceiling.
How many breaks are there in a programme?
The limits on minutes are only half of it, because the code also says how often a programme can be interrupted, and that depends on how long the programme is scheduled to run. On the public service channels, it allows:
- One break in a programme of 21 to 44 minutes
- Two breaks in a programme of 45 to 54 minutes
- Three breaks in a programme of 55 to 65 minutes
- Four breaks in a programme of 66 to 85 minutes
So an hour-long drama on ITV1 can have up to three breaks during the programme, plus the break that falls between it and whatever comes next. Some kinds of programme have extra protection on top of that. A religious service can’t be interrupted at all, for example, and there are stricter rules for news and children’s programmes.
ITV2, ITV3 and ITV4 are different
ITV’s other channels aren’t public service channels, so they follow the rules that apply to most commercial channels. They can carry an average of 9 minutes of adverts an hour across the day, and there’s no limit on how long an individual break can be. That’s why the breaks on those channels can feel longer than the ones on ITV1.
All of these rules cover broadcast television only. The adverts you see on ITVX and other streaming services aren’t governed by this code, so the broadcasters decide for themselves how many to show.
Could the rules change?
Ofcom has already looked at whether the public service channels should be allowed the same amount of advertising as everybody else, and decided in September 2023 to leave the rules as they were. It has since begun a wider review of broadcast regulation, and says it intends to consult on changes to its advertising rules by the end of March 2027, so the figures above are correct today but may be looked at again.
Why the limits matter to the price
For as long as the limits stand, what they mean in practice is that there’s only so much airtime to go round. ITV1 can’t add more breaks when more advertisers want to be on, so the price of a slot is driven by how many people are watching and how many advertisers want to reach them. It’s a big part of why the same 30 seconds costs so much more in the evening than it does in the daytime, and why it costs more in some months than others.
Where your advert sits in a break
The same limits tell you roughly how much company your advert will have. If every advert in a full break on ITV1 were 30 seconds long there would be room for seven of them, and since real breaks are a mixture of shorter and longer adverts, the number goes up and down from one break to the next. You’ll often see a sponsor’s short message on the way into the break and again on the way out, and sponsoring a programme is a different way of being on TV altogether.
You don’t normally choose the break yourself, because airtime is mostly bought by the size and kind of audience it reaches, and we’ve written separately about how those audiences are measured. A media buyer chooses the channels and times of day that suit you, and can ask for particular programmes, and the broadcaster then places each showing in a break. Even so, there are a couple of things a good buyer keeps an eye on.
The first is where the break falls. Thinkbox, the marketing body for commercial TV, says in its guide to how TV airtime is traded that viewers pay more attention to breaks in the middle of a programme than to the ones between programmes. That’s what you’d expect, because people are waiting for the story to pick up again, whereas the end of a programme is a natural moment to change channel or leave the room. The second is where your advert sits within the break. The first and last positions are generally thought to be the ones people remember best, and every campaign gets a share of them in the ordinary run of things. A buyer can negotiate for more than that, although Thinkbox says it’s likely to come at a premium.
Making an advert that holds its own
Whichever break you end up in, your advert has to work with the way breaks are really watched. Nobody sat down to watch the adverts, so while plenty of people stay where they are, others pick up their phone or go and put the kettle on. That’s an argument for giving the opening seconds a reason to be looked at, and for making sure your name is heard as well as seen, because the person in the kitchen can still hear the telly.
The advert we made for The Bed Experts, working with their agency Gibson Media, was built around exactly that. It opens with an alarm going off, which is there to grab the attention of people who might not be looking at the screen in the middle of a break, and then the customer wakes up and turns out to be in the bed showroom. The campaign helped The Bed Experts to break their previous years’ sales records.
Our guide to what TV advertising costs is a good place to start if you want to know what it would cost to be in those breaks, and if you’d like to see how your own advert might open, you can ask us for a free storyboard.
Keep reading.
What is HFSS, and how does it affect my TV ad?
New rules on advertising less healthy food and drink came into force in January 2026. Here’s what HFSS means, who’s…
Subtitles on TV ads: what ITV and Channel 4 now require
Channel 4 has required subtitles on every advert since March 2026, and ITV follows in January 2027. Here’s what’s changed…
Getting a TV ad on air: the Clearcast process explained
Every TV advert in the UK has to be approved by Clearcast before it can go on air. Here is…
Ready when you are.
Tell us a little about what you're hoping to achieve and we'll take it from there.
Let's talk about your campaign