Coming to a Theater Near You: Content-Wrapped Ads
Earlier this month Screenvision, the market leader in selling ads in movie theaters, and E! Entertainment Television agreed to provide programming to 1,500 screens, a figure Screenvision predicts will reach 5,000 by the end of 2006. E! joins HBO and Discovery Networks as Screenvision’s partners in delivering content to accompany the preshow commercials that audiences have finally come to accept.
Until recently, moviegoers stared at static trivia questions, word jumbles, or billboard ads while waiting for the commercials that signaled the start of the show. New technology that enables the digital delivery of the preshow content has enabled firms such as Screenvision and rival National CineMedia to begin splicing in the cable-network-produced programming with the ads.
Screenvision places the ads inside a 20-minute “show” in which a host introduces the content, such as a preview to an HBO miniseries or an excerpt from E!’s “Talk Soup” series. These shows bridge the commercials and the old-school slides of trivia and local advertising, which will remain, albeit in a more highly produced fashion.
Buying ads in theaters is not for everybody. At $35-$40 per 1,000 viewers, the cost is more than triple the average per-1,000 cost for a national TV spot—and that doesn’t include the estimated $1 million to produce the ad itself.
Ed Papazian, president of market research firm Media Dynamics, compares movie-theater ads with Super Bowl commercials. “If you’re Procter & Gamble, you don’t have to be there,” he says. “It’s designed to make [the advertisers] look smart. It’s designed to make them look hip.” The purpose is more promotional and image-minded than convincing moviegoers to switch their brand of toothpaste, he adds.
To that end, the ads need to have a certain creative buzz and style to them, says Stu Ballett, Screenvision’s executive vice president of marketing. “You have to respect the audience and their reason for being available to your message. They are going to the theater to be entertained and paid good money. The advertising presence in that environment should make a positive contribution to that experience.”
Papazian believes that movie advertising is ideal for upscale companies such as luxury cars, travel, or credit-card companies that want to reach consumers with an average age of 35. Food and beverage ads work too because they can lure people back to the refreshment stands.
