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Majors Spend $25-30m On Nat’l TV Per Summer Flick

July 7, 2016 by Robert Marich Leave a Comment

secret life of pets movie poster
Universal Pictures’ “The Secret Lives of Pets” received over $33 million in domestic TV advertising, in its hefty marketing campaign.

The major movie studios are spending heavily on national network TV and basic cable advertising for their summer movies, per researcher iSpot, with no letup on shoveling money into old-fashioned TV.

“On the whole, the average TV spend for a U.S. release (not including network cross-promotion and merchandising tie-ins) falls in a range of $25 million to $30 million” per major release, says an article in Advertising Age by Anthony Crupi. National TV advertising spend for summer movies comes to $475 million so far.

Those figures correlate to the $30-50 million in total domestic marketing spending for each wide release major studio film, per the third edition of book “Marketing To Moviegoers.” The rest comes from costs of creating advertising, audience research, online marketing of all types, other traditional-media advertising (spot TV, newspapers, magazine, outdoor billboards, etc.), promotions in all media and marketing costs for Canada.

For example, the Ad Age story notes that “Universal has bought $33.7 million in national TV inventory to promote the animated ‘Secret Life of Pets,’ including a $4.6 million unit in CBS’s coverage of Super Bowl 50 and a few spots in the NBA Finals.”

Says the third edition of “Marketing to Moviegoers”: “At the high end for the top tier of major studio films, this generally involves $30 million to $50 million in advertising per film, of which over half is deployed in the two-week period prior to a film’s premiere and the week afterwards, mainly on broadcast, cable TV, newspapers, outdoor billboards, magazines, radio, and digital media. Ad spending for second-tier studio movies and independent films is lower. There is also ad spending after a movie’s premiere, but it’s a lesser amount than the opening blast. Film distributors pay the full expense for national marketing, not theaters.”

Related content:

  • Summer Movie Dollars Pour Into TV/Studios Pony Up to Hype Sequels, Reboots and Kiddie Flicks
  • ‘The Secret Life of Pets’ Continues to Top TV Ad Spending

Filed Under: advertising Tagged With: campaigns-strategy, expenses

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