OBJECTIVES: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Screen for Life: National Colorectal Cancer Action Campaign (SFL) is one of the longest-running national multimedia campaigns to promote colorectal cancer (CRC) screening for men and women aged ≥50 in the United States. Since inception in 1999, no study has quantified the benefits and costs of the SFL campaign. METHODS: We modeled the impact of the SFL campaign using a range of effect sizes obtained from prior studies on the impact of public health mass media campaigns. We assumed that the effect size (i.e. the proportion of persons exposed to the campaign who are screened as a result of the campaign) would range from 0.5% to 10% of unscreened population exposed to the campaign in the last 14 years (1999–2012). Using the assumed effect size and other data obtained from the literature, we estimated the benefits of the campaign defined as the incremental population screened from being exposed to campaign messages. Given the estimated benefits of the campaign and costs, we calculated cost per person screened (2012 US dollars). RESULTS: If 0.5% of the population exposed to campaign messages were screened as a result of the exposure, an additional 251,000 persons would have been screened from 1999-2012. The average annual cost per person screened was $2.44. If the effect size was 10%, an additional 5.01 million persons would have received screening during this time period as a result of the campaign. The average annual cost per person screened was $0.12. CONCLUSIONS: The results from this exploratory study indicate that the SFL campaign may have contributed to improving CRC screening rates at a minimal cost. Our methods provide a model for analyzing the benefits and costs of mass media health promotion campaigns when no outcome data are available.