Cinema advertising

Cinema advertising is a spot in the reel that plays before the feature — usually 20, 30 or 60 seconds, in a fixed running order alongside the trailers. You buy it by screen and by week: one site, a whole multiplex, a chain, a particular film title, or an audience defined by the certificate of what is showing.

It is the only format here where the audience has paid to sit in the dark, facing a screen that fills their field of view, with sound they cannot turn down and a phone they have been asked to put away. That is the whole proposition, and it is also why the creative and the audio have to be made for the room rather than adapted from a television cut.

The advertising reel runs before the trailers and the feature, and position within it matters. The last spot before the certificate card — often sold at a premium as the gold spot — plays to an audience that is seated and quiet, while the earliest spots play to people still queuing at the counter. Spot lengths are 20, 30 and 60 seconds, and 60 seconds is far more usable here than in broadcast because nothing is competing for the attention.

You can buy in several shapes: a single site for a week, a multiplex of eight to twelve screens, a chain nationally, a specific film title, or an audience package defined by certificate. The certificate route is the one people miss — a spot cleared for universal audiences plays in front of far more screenings than one restricted to 15s, so classification is a media decision as much as a compliance one.

The standard unit is one screen for one week, and the cinema week runs Friday to Thursday because that is the release cycle. Price follows admissions at the site: a busy city-centre multiplex costs several times a suburban two-screen, and the same site costs more in a school holiday with a family release than in a flat week in October. Some inventory is sold on admissions delivered instead, quoted as a cost per thousand.

Length is priced close to pro rata below 30 seconds and rises faster above it — a 20-second spot lands around 70% of the 30-second rate, while 60 seconds costs more than double. Buying against a film title carries its own risk, because the rate is set on projected admissions. If the film underperforms you have paid for an audience that did not turn up, unless the contract says otherwise.

Cinema's measurement claim is the strongest of any format here, and it is a simple one: admissions are counted, not modelled. A ticket is a person in a seat, in a room where the advertisement is unavoidable, and the operator reports screenings and attendance per site. There is no visibility adjustment, no share of loop and no estimate of who happened to be facing the right way.

The weakness is in the forecast rather than the count. Admissions swing week to week with the release slate, the weather and half-terms, so the figure quoted when you book is a projection and the figure reported afterwards is the fact. Ask what happens if delivery falls short — an under-delivery clause that adds screenings or extends the run is normal, and worth having in writing.

Delivery is a Digital Cinema Package, mastered at 2048 × 858 for scope or 1998 × 1080 for flat, with 5.1 surround audio. The mix matters as much as the picture: a television mix, compressed and loud, sounds thin and harsh through a cinema system, and dialogue mixed for a laptop disappears in a large room. Typography and detail that read fine on a phone are enormous at twenty metres, so a television cut usually needs regrading and re-cutting rather than a straight upload.

Every advertisement also needs a certificate from the national classification body — the BBFC in the UK — and that certificate governs which films it can play in front of. A U or PG certificate opens up almost the whole schedule; a 15 restricts you to a much smaller set of screenings and quietly removes the audience you thought you had bought. Certification and the DCP encode are billed separately from the airtime, and together they are why ten working days is the standard lead time.

Nothing else buys attention like this. Full screen, full sound, no second device, no skip button, and an audience in a good mood — production values show in a way they never do on a phone, and a well-made 60 seconds does work that no amount of impressions elsewhere replicates. It is also unusually precise geographically, since a single site covers a defined catchment, which suits a local business as well as a national brand.

The costs are absolute audience and inflexibility. The number of people is small next to any outdoor buy for the same money, so cinema tends to work as the quality half of a plan rather than the whole of it. The reel is fixed for the week, admissions can miss, and creative made properly for the room is a real production budget — which is why cheap cinema advertising looks exactly like cheap cinema advertising.

Confirm which screens, which weeks and which position in the reel, because before or after the trailers changes the audience materially. Confirm whether the admissions figure is a guarantee or an estimate, and what the remedy is if it is missed. Then look at the release slate for those weeks — the film schedule is the audience, and one week either side can change who is in the room.

On production, confirm whether the DCP encode and delivery are included or billed on top, how long certification will take and who submits it, and whether the operator will accept a re-version if the certificate comes back more restrictive than expected. If the advertisement was made for television, budget for an audio remix at the very least.