The movie industry is suffering from an oversupply of success. In 2007, the industry released 517 films, a record number averaging 10 films per weekend. That’s up nearly 50% from ten years ago, and there seems to be no end in sight. The other item that’s climbing is movie ad budgets, which averaged $26 million per picture last year and ran as high as $150 million per picture for global promotion.

Further complicating the picture for movie moguls is the emerging importance of alternative media and informal reviews, which further dilute studio budgets and influence, including streaming media, word-of-mouth, social media and consumer-generated media such as blogs.

When media collide
Cutting through the congestion takes a uniquely targeted approach that goes beyond traditional demographic views, which typically do not fully capture the target market for a new release. A better approach—one that factors consumer media consumption behavior into the equation, such as opening weekend attendance, movie genre preference, number of movies seen and DVD purchase intent—paints a more robust picture. New research from Nielsen connects marketing and media data to provide studios with the ability to target specific audience segments based on more than age and other demographic variables.

Unlike other categories where new products have the luxury of time to build following, movies are pretty much a make-or-break proposition from the jump. Industry convention holds that performance during the first three days dictates a movie’s long-run success. Needless to say, with that kind of deadline pressure looming, movie marketers need to achieve a dominant share of voice immediately with breakthrough ad performance.

Clutter cutting
In addition to time constraints, movie marketers face well-financed competitors vying for airtime, space and attention. In 2007, there were five months when the category spent more than $200 million per month in national television advertising, hovering around 4% of total TV ad dollars. During the week prior to Thanksgiving alone, 37 different films ran television ad campaigns.

Linking by likes
Delving into consumer “likes” or genre preferences, Nielsen discovered a way to impact movie advertising ROI. Subtle but important differences in movie consumption habits are linked to TV viewing and Internet usage. These in turn inform media planning and buying approaches.

For example, drama lovers watch more TV— an average of 27.9 hours per week— than action/adventure, comedy, sci-fi/fantasy or horror fans. Drama devotees also index strongly as heavy to medium Internet users. Conversely, horror fans are relatively light TV watchers and Internet users. If launching a picture targeting this audience, the media mix would need to include outlets such as magazines, newspapers, billboard and mass transit.

A $26 million promotional budget for a drama that invested 28% of dollars in local spot TV delivered dramatic results—a $1 to $1.80 ratio, in other words, for every dollar spent on marketing, the box office ROI was $1.80. By contrast, a similar drama budget, which assigned fewer than half of dollars to spot TV [13%] accounted for a mere $1.40 box office ROI for the spend. For drama, a local strategy is particularly engaging.

Program power
Different programs exhibit different skews as well. For example, a network comedy program indexes well across all five genres, but proves particularly strong with sci-fi/fantasy fans. On the flip side, reality programming appears to do well with just one segment—drama buffs.

The same pattern of discrimination in TV viewing holds true for cable networks. A cable network targeting Youth does well across genres, while a women’s network does well for comedy, drama and sci-fi/fantasy, but falls short with action adventure and horror. Meanwhile, a specialty network effectively reaches horror fans, but does not deliver against any other genre. Program and genre preferences can further fine-tune media placements for maximum impact with key target customers.

Opening credit
Given the paramount importance of drawing an opening weekend crowd, marketers will need to keep an eye on time-shifting viewing habits associated with digital video recorders [DVRs]. At just under 30%, DVR household penetration among Adults 18–49 is growing, but movie fans across all genres are more likely than average to be heavy time shifters. So instead of having eyes glued to the small screen where they might encounter movie ads, they’ll be glued to the ad-free DVR screen, presenting another challenge to marketers.

Making contact
Movies represent a robust medium, attracting an average of 48.9 million people per month to movie-focused web sites. According to Nielsen Online NetView research, interest in movies outpaced that of other selected content at 9%.

Movie-goers tend to be a vocal bunch, sharing their impromptu reviews and opinions with like-minded viewers online. This online movie chatter tracks almost 1:1 with content interest, and the blogs Cinematical and The Movie Blog dominate traffic, with 7% and 5% of the blog discussions during the summer blockbuster months of May–August, 2007.

Trailers lead
When it comes to influencing movie attendance, movie trailers and personal recommendations were the two most influential factors on how people spent their movie-going dollars. Bloggers blog about what they like, and they really like movies! According to Nielsen Online’s @Plan survey, more than 50% of active bloggers have gone to a movie in the past 30 days, and 40% frequently provide movie-going advice.

Studios looking for extra lift need look no farther than this cadre of dedicated fans who are ready, willing and already spreading the word virally about the new feature films. It’s a high impact, high veracity low-cost way to spike interest in that critical opening weekend window.