CNN was doing coverage of the Ukraine when the war started and after showing a clip of a building being bombed, it cut to an Applebees commercial.

Applebee’s after decided to end relations with CNN for the blunder, but was the exposure worth it?

First up, how much does CNN charge for ads?

To get on CNN, the minimum contract for commercials is buying $300,000 in ads.

For the price of ads, the highest they charge are during presidential primary debates, at $110,000 for 30 second ads.

For normal prime time coverage, the average 30 second ad is $7,000.

This wasn’t prime time, so the price would be about $5,500 for a day time ad, putting Applebee’s paying $5,500 for that one commercial as about right.

For day time viewers, CNN can range a lot, but during the initial Ukraine coverage, it was projected around 350,000 people were watching the network.

So lets see what the value was for CNN in the coverage.

A YouTube channel called Memology posted the CNN clip/Applebee’s ad and it has 1 million views after 9 days.

Showing that one mistake got Applebee’s almost 3x as many views as they expected for $5,500.

Doing a quick scan of YouTube, Facebook and TikTok search, on all three networks, the coverage is easily over 10 million views on videos covering it each.

On top of that, a popular meme series showing something awful and a photo of Applebee’s underneath.

This is ultimately good for Applebee’s, because most people are aware this was a mistake of CNN and not them.

The mistake however is going to buy Applebee’s millions in free PR on a $5,500 investment.