DM News recently published an article titled Movie Sites Benefit from Online Advertising which attributes large boosts in movie site traffic to online advertising on portals such as Yahoo and MSN.
Reprise Media Director of Strategic Development Randy Schwartz gives his take:
That single online buys comprise the vast majority of traffic to an official film website seems pretty consistent with Hollywood’s promotional techniques these days – to bombard the public with hype to the point that the average summer blockbuster will make 1/3 of its total domestic grosses within that first weekend. Just as the marketing budget for Star Wars: Episode III was being estimated as high as $50M (against a production budget of $130M), the fact remains that the vast majority of those promotional dollars will have been spent within the 3-4 weeks ramping up to opening weekend.
That production studios are spending a larger portion of their promotional budgets online is no great surprise, and that they’re completely saturating their selected online venues within those first few days is consistent with the broader promotional strategy. So the fact that 83% of the visits to the website for Batman Begins comes from Hotmail is no great surprise, or that 57% of visits to the website for The Longest Yard came from one singular buy on Yahoo! is equally consistent.
Consider what these movies are – populist entertainment, product intended for the widest audience possible. It only makes sense the marketers would frontload their online spend across the select few partners that can provide the greatest possible reach and penetration of an online audience. Additionally, there’s the fact that Hollywood now releases their blockbusters simultaneously in over 100 countries. I can’t help but wonder whether they require an online partner to provide great depth of access to that global population.
Editor’s note: We hear that Leprechaun 3 is Randy’s favorite movie.
Writer’s response: I actually prefer Leprechaun In The Hood with Ice-T and Coolio.
