Ag Talk | Cinema advertising: A growing trend

Cinema advertising is one of the fastest growing trends in the advertising space off lately. It is a great way to reach a massive audience in an engaging environment. The divergent advantage of cinema advertising is that your audience is caged and entirely fixated on screen. And one name that has helped the advertisers better their sales projects and planning is Interactive Television Private Limited which is a part of WPP group and is claimed to the only integrated entertainment & retail marketing company.

Headed by Ajay Mehta, Interactive Television was set up as a marketing agency to provide cinema advertising and marketing services in multiplexes, malls, and shopping chains.
Founded in 1996 in New Delhi, India, Interactive Television works across a lot of screens in India. The best known for its Cinema Audit Monitoring Report each month; ITV gives comparative analysis of cinema advertising and movie marketing throughout the country.  The 15year old business is the largest entertainment marketing business of India today and provides marketing services using entertainment properties to clients such as Pepsi Co, Google, Citibank, Yum Restaurants, Dell, Kellogg’s etc.

In the year 1999 and 2001, Mehta launched Interactive Online Tickets which was in the space of providing ticketing solutions for movies, concerts, sporting events amongst other live events. This business was acquired by Indya.com, part of News Corp. In 2007, the WPP Group, a worldwide marketing services conglomerate, took a controlling stake in Interactive Television. 

Adgully (AG): You launched a third-party monitoring tool – Cinema Audit Monitoring (CAM) in 2013, how was the year gone by?
Ajay Mehta (AM):
The response has been really phenomenal. This tool is not only being used by just advertisers but by theatres as well as it serves as a great intelligence for the industry and for us in terms of making their/our sales proposals much effective. CAM report by Interactive Television is an initiative seeking to capture and present the trends and developments in the Indian Cinema advertising industry. It is the most credible report documenting important specifics of this exciting month including presence of each category and brands in cinema, brand recall, placement and distribution strategy of each brand and traces the developments in the Indian cinema advertising.

AG:  What need gap did CAM filled up or the clients?
AM:
CAM helps the advertisers figure out which movies to advertise with, where there is clutter or whether they should advertise with movie in the start or during interval etc. and all this information was lacking in the industry before CAM was launched. Interestingly, prior to CAM advertisers had no clue about cinema advertising so extensively, therefore CAM has filled quite an essential need gap of media and advertising industry.  

AG: The monitoring is carried out in top eight cities covering 200 screens, how challenging is to collect the data and use it?
AM:
For data collection we partner with a lot of research agencies like IPSOS etc. and we publish CAM once a month, so it is challenging at times but not that much. But now we are planning to expand in terms of adding more cinema houses and publishing CAM more often, that time it will be challenge surely.

AG: As you mentioned about expanded, how are looking at doing the same?
AM:
As of now we collect data from 8 cities and 600 screens but overall India has around nine to ten thousand screens, so our target is to cover at least 5 percent of that in the coming years. With every movie do not go use data from so many screens but with upcoming movies like PK we would probably get into such a big number. Having said, with big blockbusters we try and cover as many screen as possible.

AG: Interactive Television has come a long way from 1996 to 2014, if you have to elaborate on few things that you feel have changed in the last eight years, what that would be?
AM:
Though a lot of things have changed but what has really caught every body’s attention in the cinema advertising space is the evolved structure of the Cinemas which can be fairly termed as ‘Multiplexes Structure’. The numbers of multiplexes are increasing quite rapidly in the top cities and even in the smaller towns which has affected the cinema advertising scenario completely. Secondly, the ‘digitization’ of cinemas has made the ‘Piracy rate’ go down hence a lot of clients take an opportunity to adversities in Cinema. 

AG: As you said that with Piracy rate going down a lot of clients are getting involved in the ‘Cinema Advertising’, if you have to mention the category of clients that have shown maximum interest what would that be?
AM:
 Brands like telecom and FMCG who want to reach to masses, believe a lot in Cinema Advertising. 

AG: Does having an umbrella like WPP helps expanding footprints and manage the clientele in the market?
AM:
Yes it does help in building a better reach with the clients as Cinema advertising is a fairly new medium. It is approximately 1 percent of the total ad-spends but now it is seen becoming a part of every advertisers plan. 5 years ago a lot of brands were not adding cinema advertising in their media plans but now most of them are hence working with a big umbrella does help you in terms of structuring your organization all the more better.

AG: When you started Interactive Television, what was the mindset then and how has it evolved now?
AM:
Cinema is India’s greatest passion and has been enchanting audiences for almost a century now hence personally; the mindset has not really changed…! I was a big believer of Cinema and will remain one. In a country like India where movies are passion my aim when I started and now also remains the same that is to optimize this medium extensively and help brands utilizing the same.

AG: As you have been mentioning about the fact that brands have started using ‘Cinema advertising’ quite often now. So what pie of share does it holds in the advertising spends pie? 
AM:
Cinema advertising generally happens with big movies like Bang Bang, Happy New Year and now it is expected to happen with PK. Today with so much of penetration in the Bollywood industry we have more than 20 marketable films in a year which creates more demand of Cinema Advertising. Globally it holds only 1 percent of the pie but we see it evolving at a faster rate in the coming years.

AG: With advertising industry getting so robust what kind of growth has Interactive Television witnessed in past few years?
AM:
Though we do not share growth figures but we have witnessed significant growth in the last couple of years and Cinema advertising per says has also grown at a faster rate which is better than any other advertising medium. By Aanchal kohli | Twitter: @aanchalkohli

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