by Anna Davtyan
Do you ever scroll through your Instagram feed, looking at photos of your friends living their best lives, and a sponsored movie trailer suddenly makes its way onto your screen? At first, you couldn’t care less about this impersonal two-minute video, but the film’s pretty faces and alluring introduction stop you scrolling to the next picture. Film marketers are experts at making you feel this sense of curiosity about their content, and they use a wide variety of tactics to make their large audiences feel the same way. These techniques are also being redesigned to succeed in the world of digital media, as this digital age is transforming the entertainment industry like never before. So, let’s take a look at how marketing works in the film industry today and how it is evolving in response to digital media.
1. Movie Trailers
First and foremost, marketing in the film industry must thrive in broadcast media, which includes television networks, radio shows, newspapers, and magazines. In regard to TV networks, movie trailers are the most widely used method to advertise films. This is obviously the case because it gets people curious about the film’s content, and it is reported that 54% of viewers usually watch a film’s trailer before watching the movie itself.1 While trailers primarily cater to the general public, they are also important for investors gauge whether or not a movie is worth investing in. If a movie trailer is successfully executed, this success is reflected in changes in the film’s stock prices, as investors will buy more stock if they think the film will gain popularity.1Much of what influences investors’ financial choices include the trailer’s release date, whether or not the cast is famous, and the emotional appeal of the trailer’s scenes (humorous, violent, sexual, etc.).
2. Press Tours
In addition to trailers, press tours are an awesome way to advertise films for one primary reason: cost-efficiency. Unlike movie trailers, which require an average budget of $1.6 million to create and distribute,2press tours are much less dependent on financial budgeting. Production companies don’t have to pay talk shows excessive amounts of money to host their actors because their presence alone will encourage more traffic to the shows. Conversely, talk shows don’t have to pay actors very much because the exposure and publicity they get from being on the show serves as the payment itself.
3. Advertising on Streaming Services
Streaming services such as YouTube and Hulu have become a hub for film advertisements in recent years because of their heavy web traffic. While the cost of advertising on streaming services varies from platform to platform, here are some of the reported costs for advertising on these popular streaming services.
YouTube: The cost of advertising a video on YouTube ranges from $0.10 to $0.30 per view.3The cost of an ad on YouTube is determined by the type of ad, the quality of the ad, and the ad’s targeted demographic.
Hulu: The cost of advertising on Hulu ranges from $25 to $30 CPM (cost per mile = cost per 1,000 views).4
These numbers apply to the film industry just as much as they do to any other company, but obviously pricing will fluctuate depending on the movie’s popularity and marketing budget.
4. Advertising on Social Media
Advertising films on social media platforms such as Instagram works relatively similarly to advertising on streaming services. That is, the cost is often determined by view count. On Instagram, the cost of running an ad is roughly $6.70 CPM.5However, the cost of advertising on social media depends heavily on the structure of the app. For example, Snapchat pricing ranges from as little as $5 to as much as $500,000 depending on which in-app feature is used to advertise.6These features include sponsored Snapchat lenses, geofilters, and the discover page, which all vary in user traffic. While these statistics are based on general advertisements, pricing does not work differently for film ads, as they seek just as much publicity as any other company.
From movie trailers on TV to Snapchat filters, marketing in the film industry is evidently a costly endeavor. This is understandable considering that much of what drives a film’s success is exposure, which is difficult to get without a substantial marketing budget. However, you’ll occasionally find low-budget films that blow up in the box office simply because of their quality, so it’s important to not lose sight of the fact that filmmaking is an art and not solely a product to sell. Thus, the takeaway here is that when a great film is paired with great marketing it can truly achieve its fullest potential.
References:
Karray, Salma, and Lidia Debernitz. “The Effectiveness of Movie Trailer Advertising.” Taylor & Francis, www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02650487.2015.1090521?scroll=top&needAccess=true.
Jerrick, David. “The Effectiveness of Film Trailers: Evidence from the College Student Market.” UW-L Journal of Undergraduate Research XVI (2013), 3.
McLeod, Betsy. “How Much Does YouTube Advertising Cost?” Blue Corona, 4 Mar. 2019, www.bluecorona.com/blog/how-much-does-it-cost-to-advertise-youtube.
Learmonth, Michael. “Hulu Ads A Bargain Compared To NBC.com.” Business Insider, Business Insider, 26 June 2008, www.businessinsider.com/2008/6/hulu-ad-bargain.
ThriveHive. “How Much Does It Cost to Advertise on Instagram?” ThriveHive, 15 Dec. 2018, thrivehive.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-advertise-on-instagram/.
“Snapchat Advertising Costs - A Breakdown Of Each Offering.” Wallaroo Media, wallaroomedia.com/snapchat-advertising-costs/.