Before the trailers

Not only have movie prices increased to reach almost $10, but the theaters are increasingly showing full length commercials before the trailers and the movie. Clearly, advertising has become an important source of additional revenue. One can easily see the appeal–a captive audience with nothing else to do but to watch the commercials and the ability of advertisers to select audience by geography/zip code.  Mind you, advertising in theaters is nothing new. For years, there were stills being shown before the trailers, and of course, promotions for movie theater related “stuff” like popcorn and soda. Recently, I have noted the commercials are lengthier and with higher production values than the stuff we see on TV. Because advertisers know that movie goers are going to see a film that probably cost tens of millions of dollars to produce, they also are producing high quality commercials that seem movie-like. Stella Artois (as mentioned in my post on beer commercials) has been doing this for a while. Last Friday, I saw a great commercial with Martin Scorsese…the kicker is I can’t remember the advertiser! I think it may have been AT&T.

Movie advertising is here to stay. The good thing is that we can almost certainly count on it to be entertaining.