Feature: Advertisers Respond To Changing Cinema Audience

It is just three months since the UK cinema industry celebrated its most successful weekend in history and already the record has been broken again. Over the weekend of 11-13 February, box office admissions reached a new high of £14.2 million, pushed by the release of computer-animated film Toy Story 2 and The Beach, starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Last year as a whole was a booming one for the industry with admissions the highest for 25 years and box office receipts up by 11%.

The boom in the industry is being matched by an increase in advertising revenue and a higher profile of advertisers attracted to the medium. Revenue for 1999 is expected to reach £123 million, according to figures released by the Advertising Association. This is an increase of 27% on last year and has been driven by a record number of high-grossing films covering a range of genre and certificates: ten films grossed more than £15m, compared to six in 1998.

Cinema as a whole has been forced to widen its audience in recent years. A shift in the population has led to the production of films with a broader appeal, according to Craig Harris, national sales director at Pearl and Dean, who cites movies like Shakespeare in Love and Titanic as examples of such films. “There has been a shift since 1994 with an overall decline in the population of 15-34 year olds. Thus the film industry has by necessity moved towards targeting a wider audience range,” he says.

The percentage of under 35s has shifted: 68% of cinemagoers are now under 35, compared to 73% five years ago. However, the number of ABC1s amongst cinemagoers has increased, with 66% falling into this category. In fact, the cinema audience has one of the highest ABC1 profiles, higher than that of Channel 4 and BBC2.

This broader, more upmarket audience is attracting a similar kind of advertiser. In the last five years the categories of advertisers using the medium has broadened. In 1995, two categories of advertisers, food and drink, accounted for 50% of revenue; in 1999 half the adspend for the year was spread across the top four categories – food, drink, cosmetics and cars. As the product base has widened, so too has the scope of the ads developed for cinema. With the emergence of multiplexes, which now take 65% of admissions, mainstream national advertisers have almost completely replaced ads for local curry houses, carpet shops and hairdressers.