I ate so much movie popcorn, I’m gonna explode — quick, where’s the nearest burger joint?
Dinner and a movie — or more commonly, movie and a dinner — is alive and well. In a 2022 study of 1,000 U.S. moviegoers, movie-theater advertising company Screenvision Media and data analytics firm Screen Engine/ASI study found that 79 percent of respondents visited a restaurant or bar immediately before or after seeing a film in theaters.
Like all good data, it gets more granular than that. Those companies also have a pretty good idea of where you’re eating and drinking — and the answer dovetails nicely with those ubiquitous ads that force-feed your attention before the previews. They may be long and loud, but you can’t say they don’t work.
The tracking is easy, relatively speaking: Third-party companies like cloud-based location technology platform Foursquare data-mine your mobile ID, and if you’ve double opted-in to location-tracking on certain smartphone apps you’re their newest data point. (GasBuddy or certain weather apps are particular favorites.) Screenvision also works with M4, which gets its data from a panel that is arguably more aware of the location-based information being compiled and sold.
Beyond where you are, what advertisers really want to do is influence why you go there. And the more you see an ad during Screenvision pre-feature show “Screenvision Front + Center” or NCM’s “Noovie,” the more you’re likely to visit one of the establishments advertised.
Theatergoers may complain about being a captive audience for big-screen ads, but captive often translates to being engaged. When the screen is massive and the sound is inescapable, the theatergoer is often invested beyond their price of admission.
Most moviegoers buy their tickets a day or more ahead of the showtime and travel an average of 11 miles from home to the theater, according to industry data. This is an audience “begging the screen to entertain them,” Jennifer Friedlander, VP of insights and measurement at Screenvision, told IndieWire. The result is high attention levels and recall rates.
“There’s something that happens when you sit down, because you know you’re not going to be interrupted for two-plus hours,” Friedlander said. “You have a 40-foot screen in front of you, you’re ready to be entertained and engaged. And that’s where our advertising lives.”
During the pre-show, including the ads, a movie-theater audiences’ eyes are on the big screen for about 23 seconds out of 30 seconds, or roughly 75 percent of the time, per an April 2023 Amplified Intelligence study. Compare that with the TV medium, in which eyes are only on the screen for 11 seconds (36 percent of the time for linear TV; 34 percent on streaming) of each half-minute commercial.
The disparity in recall, or the ability to remember seeing a certain ad, is even wider. Over the past four years, movie-theater audiences had an average ad-recall rate of 72 percent, according to Screenvision data. The general consensus is TV ads have less than 20 percent recall.
“We probably do push a little bit of activity,” Screenvision CEO John Partilla told IndieWire. While his ads likely “won’t make you run out and buy a car,” you will “go to the local margarita place” that was advertised ahead of the feature presentation.
Movie ads also work on promoting major chains. Years ago, Friedlander said she worked with Applebees to place a theatrical ad targeted to its menu changes; the brand saw a 50 percent lift. More recently she worked with Starbucks; it found that after audiences were exposed to an ad for the coffee chain, those moviegoers went to a Starbucks 3 percent more often over the following four weeks.
“For a brand like Starbucks that’s so well-penetrated, that’s huge,” Friedlander said.
NCM, which is Screenvision’s chief rival and the larger of the two movie-theater advertising-sales companies, did not respond to IndieWire’s request for participation in this story.
Movie theaters are happy to have the advertising revenue, which is split with an NCM or Screenvision, but they’d be even happier if those ads didn’t work. Exhibitors would love to be the ones that relieved you of your entire evening’s budget.
According to Cinemark chief marketing and content officer Wanda Gierhart, 80 percent of their theaters have food and beverage options beyond standard concessions and 60 percent of them serve alcohol. AMC, the only theater chain larger than Cinemark in the U.S., did not immediately respond to our request for comparable statistics.
“We’re big data people,” Gierhart said. “And we use all of that data to end up influencing all of our food and beverage offerings [and] our cocktail offerings.”
