Movie auditoriums are an oasis from the online world, but that doesn’t mean theater circuits aren’t trying to hook on-the-go consumers with digital media.
In the TV advertising upfront market, NCM Media Network unveiled some mobile wireless initiatives connected with its core on-screen cinema advertising for its movie theater clients:
* In digital online, NCM offers FirstLook5, which is a five-minute mobile version of its on-screen video programming.
* Later this month, NCM will launch a second-screen app called FirstLook Sync App in association with Regal Cinema’s Regal App. A press release says the app “seamlessly interacts with NCM’s FirstLook pre-show through audio recognition technology, designed to give movie audiences direct response capability and automatically remind them to be courteous and turn off their cell phone when FirstLook ends and the movie trailers begin.”
* NCM also announced tie-ins with Twitter and local search outfit Foursquare.
* Magazine “Entertainment Weekly” is creating custom content for NCM.
How impactful these online initiatives will be remains to be seen, but they should deliver some audience to augment conventional on-screen ads. This should help NCM’s advertising sales. Presumably persons using mobile devices in the theater for NCM’s two-screen experience during the pre-show won’t be a bother to the overall audience.
“Not only does our NCM network reach over 700 million moviegoers a year, but the high level of engagement from our audience is unique to the cinema medium,” Cliff Marks, president of sales and marketing with NCM Media Networks, said in the press release. “Our viewers made a decision to go to the movies — they chose to come out with friends and family to watch our 40-foot screen and be entertained,”
Interestingly, NCM claims to have greater reach, meaning breadth of unduplicated audience, than any one TV channel on Friday or Saturday, which of course are peak cinema-going days. NCM didn’t provide details though.
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