{"id":21614,"date":"2024-10-13T23:13:18","date_gmt":"2024-10-13T23:13:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mysourcefunding.com\/?p=21614"},"modified":"2024-10-13T23:13:19","modified_gmt":"2024-10-13T23:13:19","slug":"advertisers-are-targeting-horror-loving-audiences-in-theaters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mysourcefunding.com\/?p=21614","title":{"rendered":"Advertisers are targeting horror-loving audiences in theaters"},"content":{"rendered":"

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To promote the horror film Longlegs<\/em> this summer, indie studio Neon didn\u2019t take out a single TV ad.<\/p>\n

Instead, it bought a billboard in Los Angeles displaying a phone number that, when called, played an audio message from the film\u2019s serial killer played by Nicolas Cage. <\/p>\n

The number received more than 250,000 calls in the first 48 hours\u2014and Longlegs<\/em>, which notched $22.4 million in the US in its first weekend, went on to become Neon\u2019s highest-grossing release of all time.<\/p>\n

Longlegs <\/em>isn\u2019t the only horror film to do well in the last year. Another Neon horror film, Immaculate<\/em>, released in March, was briefly the studio\u2019s biggest opening weekend for a film domestically ($5.3 million), before Longlegs<\/em>; it went on to make over $28 million at the global box office. Meanwhile, this summer\u2019s M. Night Shyamalan horror Trap <\/em>raked in more than $80 million at the international box office.<\/p>\n

As moviegoers flock to theaters to see horror films, some advertisers have turned to in-theater ads to target the audiences those titles attract, who, cinema advertisers told us, can be harder to reach through other channels.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs it typically is in media, the advertisers follow the audience, and the fact that we\u2019ve seen audiences really flocking to these smaller indie horror films\u2014the advertising dollars are following,\u201d Christine Martino, CRO at Screenvision Media, a company that sells ads on national and regional movie-theater screens, said. \u201cThose horror films, those indie horror films, have really become these water-cooler cultural moments that we have the opportunity to allow advertisers to follow their consumers to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Killer instinct\u00a0<\/h2>\n

Advertising against indie horror films can allow brands to strategically target a somewhat elusive demographic, according to Jennifer Friedlander, SVP of insights and measurement at Screenvision.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re the cord-cutters, they\u2019re the ad-avoiders,\u201d she said. \u201cThey\u2019re heavy streamers of non-ad-supported content. They\u2019re online all the time\u2026This is really the one place where advertisers can really connect with them during a highly personalized moment that they\u2019ve opted into because of their interest.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to internal Screenvision data provided to Marketing Brew, half of cinema audiences are 18-34 year olds, and that demographic seems to love horror movies, frequently accounting for more than half of the opening-weekend audiences for those titles, per Screenvision. By comparison, that same group makes up 13% of NFL Sunday viewership, according to Screenvision.<\/p>\n

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Mike Rosen, CRO at National CineMedia, a cinema advertising company, said the horror\/thriller genre \u201csuper-serves\u201d younger audiences, who can be more challenging for advertisers to reach than older viewers. (Overall, he said, cinema patrons are young and diverse, with a median age of 30.)<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of the marketers that come to NCM are looking for the reach\u2014the incremental, valuable reach of that younger audience,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Keep horror weird<\/h2>\n

Some indie horror films have a key advantage in that indie films overall, horror or not, tend to have a longer viewership lifespan, Kevin McGaw, SVP and head of marketing at Screenvision,<\/em> told Marketing Brew. Thanks in part to the marketing that personal recommendations can provide, indie titles can attract more viewers into theaters in the weeks after their debuts.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe marketing that goes behind the big hits creates this anticipation, but when you think about the indie films, a lot of it is word-of-mouth\u2014they don\u2019t have the marketing campaign,\u201d he said. \u201cUltimately, some people go see it, and then they socially post about it, and then it creates a groundswell of an actual increase in audience [during the] second, third, fourth week.\u201d<\/p>\n

Take last year\u2019s creepy hit M3GAN<\/em>. Viral memes and positive reviews helped push its global box office intake past $180 million.<\/p>\n

As for the rest of the year, there will be plenty more horror films, both indie and otherwise, coming, including Paramount Pictures\u2019s Smile 2<\/em>, which is hitting the big screen ahead of Halloween, A24\u2019s horror film Heretic<\/em>, which stars Hugh Grant, in November, and Amy Adams-led Nightbitch <\/em>from Disney\u2019s Searchlight Pictures in December.<\/p>\n

\u201cOctober is going to be a great indicator,\u201d Martino said. \u201cYou have a lot of smaller horror that\u2019s going to get a good percent of that audience coming through.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read the full article here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To promote the horror film Longlegs this summer, indie studio Neon didn\u2019t take out a single TV ad. Instead, it bought a billboard in Los Angeles displaying a phone number that, when called, played an audio message from the film\u2019s serial killer played by Nicolas Cage. The number received more than 250,000 calls in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21615,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-21614","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-marketing"},"yoast_head":"\nAdvertisers are targeting horror-loving audiences in theaters | Brandiary<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"To promote the horror film Longlegs this summer, indie studio Neon didn\u2019t take out a single TV ad.Instead, it bought a billboard in Los Angeles displaying\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/mysourcefunding.com\/?p=21614\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta 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