Cinema advertising

Because of the captive nature of cinema audiences, this medium can potentially have a major impact. Advertisements can benefit from colour, movement and sound and exposure is high due to the captive nature of the audience. As an advertising medium, it has both advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages of cinema advertising

•  Captive audience . There is truly a captive audience since the cinema is purpose built and there are none of the distractions surrounding the home viewing of television.

•  Longer video . The cinema commercial can be longer than the TV commercial and so is less abrupt and kaleidoscopic.

•  No interruption of programme . There are no commercial breaks, the commercials being shown as a complete segment before or after films and since they are shown the same number of times, each audience sees them.

•  Zoning . While TV commercials can be shown in selected regions, cinema advertising can be shown in selected towns.

•  Entertainment atmosphere . Cinema advertising is seen in a pleasant, receptive atmosphere.

•  Larger screen . Being shown on a larger and wider screen than that of the TV set, the picture is more dramatic, realistic and imperative.

Disadvantages of cinema advertising

•  Repetition of the advertisement may be difficult with cinema advertising to achieve given the fact that people visit cinemas intermittently and unfortunately, without repetition, cinema advertisements have little lasting effect; however, they do tend to be useful for supporting press and television advertising.

•  Like broadcast media, it is a transient medium and it relies on remembering the message; this may depend on how often the commercial is seen. However, research has shown that the recall rate can be as high as fifty per cent of cinema-goers interviewed being able to recall correctly a cinema commercial seen seven days earlier. ( Frank Jefkins, 1998)