According to the report, almost 57 per cent of the total population are cinema-goers who watch movies in theatre at least once in six months...

Be it Manyavar, the men’s clothing brand, or Vicco Vajradanti paste, chances are that consumers will recall the brand names and jingles from one of the ad films played in cinema theatres and not from TV ads, says a study. Even if cinema, as an advertising medium, is small and hardly gets 1 per cent of the total annual advertising expenditure, brands are realising the power of this medium as third-party monitoring systems get launched.

GroupM-owned Interactive TV, the largest player in theatre advertising of cinemas in the country, has for the first time carried out a study across top eight metros to understand and decipher the movie-going audience. And the findings of the report, ‘At a Theater Near You’, suggest that cinema halls provide the most captive audience that is young, premium and affluent.

“We have tried to figure out who this audience is, why they watch the movies and what are their other habits,” said Ajay Mehta, managing director at Interactive TV. “This is arguably the first ever such study and makes for a fascinating read, it will help to answer any questions that advertisers have had but not been able to get answers to, regarding the audience profile, their behaviour and their consumption habits. We think advertisers will find this very useful in planning their campaigns,” he said.

“Being the leaders of cinema advertising in India, we are trying to make cinema more transparent and accountable,” Mehta said. According to the report, almost 57 per cent of the total population are cinema-goers who watch movies in theatre at least once in six months.

More importantly, 71 per cent of these cinemagoers are in the age group of 15-24 years. Also, 61 per cent of the total moviegoers come from the affluent class, NCCS A. Interestingly, it’s not the popularity of movie or stars anymore (39 per cent) that attracts moviegoers to the screens. Movie-going has become a habit for many families and 61 per cent people go to screens out of habit or to spend time with their families.

The most important point from an advertiser point of view is that 50 per cent of this audience is open and willing to consume advertisements before the start of the movie and during the intermission. Over half of the respondents (50-60 per cent) have said that they pay more attention to theatre ads and find them more interesting than TV ads. Moreover, average consumers reach the movie hall 15 minutes before the show time, which allows enough and more branding opportunities for the advertisers to engage with consumers who are also digital savvy.

“In today’s world, it is not about the 30-second-TVC anymore. It’s about relevant storytelling across diverse channels,” said Siddharth Banerjee, EVP — marketing at Vodafone India. “Depending upon the objective, we now have a plethora of channels to tell a story with more relevance and contextuality than ever before,” he said. According to Banerjee, in cinema, advertisers have the ability to deliver a targeted marketing campaign with speed, shown in pre-selected geographic areas, targeting specific weeks and movies to suit their target audience and marketing campaign calendar.

“This medium helps us to reach out to a core audience which could be hard to engage with meaningfully, otherwise. The younger audiences are heavy users of Internet and cinema. Cinemagoers in the age between 15 and 34 years are heavy users of Internet, therefore, combining cinema with digital can help to target this younger demographic in very interesting ways,” he said.

Banerjee said his company seeks learnings from this research to plan our cinema campaigns even more sharply to help deliver on brand and business objectives. Saujanya Shrivastava, group CMO at GoMMT (Goibibo and MakeMyTrip), said, “cinema is an important communication medium for consumer brands like us.