Cinema advertising reaches $540M in 2007

According to some new research released by the Cinema Advertising Council (and as reported by Mediaweek), 2007 was a very good year for movie theater advertising companies. Despite dwindling audience sizes and increasing operating costs, "cinema advertising crossed the half-a-billion-dollar milestone last year climbing 18.5 percent to nearly $540 million." The most interesting part, to me, was that, "a cinema buy is also no longer a one-shot deal. Advertisers, which often dip into TV budgets for cinema, are placing yearly campaign schedules further in advance when TV upfronts are planned," indicating that cinema is being treated as a new medium or outlet that must be planned in conjunction with other parts of a multichannel campaign. While we've seen outdoor billboards treated that way for a while (especially with huge companies like Clear Channel holding so many billboards as to make a national buy possible), doing so with a relatively new medium like digital advertising in theaters marks another high point for the digital signage industry.


While digital signage "purists" often don't include cinema advertising when talking about digital screen networks, it pretty well fits my definition of "the electronic delivery of a message to a screen at a specific place and time", so I have to chalk this one up as a win for all of us.

Tags: digital signage, cinema advertising