How Much to Charge Per Ad Spot: Advertised Prices From 76 Sites
Community card advertised prices from 76 operator sites across 81 markets. Read the benchmark, its limits and a pricing method based on your own routes and costs.
What does a community card ad spot sell for?
The median advertised price in the 9x12 Tools Community Card Pricing Survey (2026) is $477 per mailing. It covers 76 operator campaign sites across 81 markets. It measures asking prices, not completed sales. We cannot infer what a typical operator earns from this number.
| Lower quartile | Median | Upper quartile |
|---|---|---|
| $250 | $477 | $810 |
Correction, September 13, 2026: earlier wording described these as prices spots “sell for” and implied changes over time. The observations are advertised prices from a snapshot, not settled transactions or a longitudinal study.
Why the range is so wide
Compare the product behind the price: delivery count, placement dimensions, mailing frequency, included artwork and category terms. A larger placement or a different audience is not directly comparable just because both use a 9x12 card.
These are useful factors to investigate; this survey does not isolate their individual effects on price or prove that a particular neighborhood can support one price rather than another.
The mistake: treating the median as your price
A median from other operators is a reference point, not your price list. Calculate your own costs and check what the businesses serving your selected routes are willing to buy.
For illustration, dividing the advertised median by the reported median drop of 2,500 pieces yields a cost per household. Combining separate medians does not establish a measured average cost per household, and it does not predict advertiser results.
Per mailing or per month? Pick one and be consistent
A monthly charge and a per-mailing charge describe different commitments unless you mail every month. State the number and timing of mailings, what happens if a drop is delayed, and the period covered by each payment. Do not blend prices with different billing units into one comparison.
How to price your first card
- Set the route selection and quantity. Obtain printing, shipping, preparation and postage figures for that plan.
- Count all expenses. Include artwork, processing, software, fulfillment and time before describing an amount as profit.
- Design the placements. Check legibility and the value of each size in the actual printed layout.
- Test the proposal with qualified advertisers. Record the price and scope they accept, including discounts. A verbal yes is not collected revenue.
- Calculate a go/no-go point. Decide how many collected sales cover the full budget before committing to print. See the worked example.
In 9x12 Tools, saving EDDM routes automatically generates, scores and ranks local prospects. You still review the fit, make the outreach and set prices. The ranking does not guarantee a sale or establish an optimal price.
Has community card pricing gone up?
This snapshot cannot answer that. Comparing sites with different launch years is not the same as observing prices on the same sites over time. A defensible trend would need comparable observations, dates, inclusion rules and a method for handling changes in delivery counts and placements.
What about 9x12 versus 6x11?
The published research does not establish a reliable price comparison by format. Use actual printer quotes and placement dimensions for your decision. Both formats can use the same EDDM Retail postage when the mailpieces qualify.
Where these numbers come from
Research name: 9x12 Tools Community Card Pricing Survey (2026).
Publisher: 9x12 Tools, operated by Seek First Development LLC. We sell the software used by the operators in this sample.
Observed measure: publicly advertised prices for a mid-size spot on 76 operator campaign sites hosted on the platform, spanning 81 markets. The median is the middle advertised price; it is not a mean or a completed transaction price.
Published inclusion rules: sites still using default platform pricing are excluded. Active and churned operators are included. Per-mailing and per-month prices are separated. No individual operator, site or city is identified.
Missing reproducibility details: the exact observation window, total count of eligible spots and operator-level records are not published. The article’s publication and update dates do not supply those missing collection dates. An outside reader cannot reproduce the aggregate from this page alone.
Selection limits: one platform is not a representative sample of every community card business. Discounts, unsold spots, uncollected payments and operator expenses are not established by advertised prices.
What this does not measure: earnings, success rates, workload, renewal rates or advertiser response. Multiplying the median by a spot count is arithmetic, not a measured outcome.
Why no raw list: it would identify operators and their commercial pricing. Until a reproducible, appropriately permissioned release is available, treat this as a publisher-reported benchmark and check your own market. We have not published an independently audited dataset.
Read the sources and corrections policy. To report a problem, use the Contact link in the footer with the claim and source.
