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4 insights to drive more ticket sales

THE NEW ERA OF BOX OFFICE DIGITAL MARKETING

State of the industry ....................................................... 01

Responding to change .................................................... 02

INSIGHT 1: More time = more opportunities .................. 03

INSIGHT 2: Increase messaging, increase conversions .... 04

INSIGHT 3: Movie buyers are everywhere online ............ 05

INSIGHT 4: Look beyond opening weekend .................. 06

Case study: Hereditary .................................................... 07

The lifecycle of the movie buyer ....................................... 08

Some final advice .......................................................... 09

CONTENTS

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STATE OF THE INDUSTRYToday, movie marketers have more obstacles than ever to reach the right opening-weekend audience for a new film. Television advertising, once the primary play for generating interest in an upcoming release, can’t guarantee the same level of audience penetration as streaming increases.

eMarketer research says that the number of cord-cutters in the U.S. will climb by 32.8%—to 33 million—by the end of 2018. The change in consumer habits has shown in reduced box office numbers. According to Box Office Mojo, theater admissions in the U.S. and Canada were down 5.8% in 2017—the lowest since 1992. Ticket prices were up 3.2% that year, which kept revenue above $11 billion, but according to Geetha Ranganatham, a Bloomberg Intelligence analyst, “The industry should be concerned if the metric falls again.”

The industry saw a glimmer of hope as summer 2018 box office numbers were up 14.4% YoY. By no means is this a record-setting number, but it shows that studios may be starting to slow the decline in ticket sales they’ve seen in recent years. And of course, releasing good movies helps.

Another key factor shaping the industry is the studios’ ability to own the creation and distribution channels for their content. From opening weekend in theaters to online streaming, studios are increasingly guiding the customer conversations. Disney just announced their own Disney+ streaming service, targeting release in late 2019, and Netflix is making a bigger play to have their content screened in theaters prior to release on their streaming platform. It’s clear that the market is changing significantly, and marketing strategies need to shift in kind. 1

Summer 2018 box office numbers were up 14.4% YoY

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Methodology

The four insights in this report come from all Conversant Box Office campaigns from June 1, 2017, through September 30, 2018. The findings are aggregated averages from those campaigns.

Someone who’s a known purchaser of movie tickets, based on their transaction history. Note: This differs from a movie enthusiast, someone who has expressed interest in movies online by watching trailers or visiting movie-industry sites with movie trivia and information.

The online or offline purchase of a movie ticket by someone in a campaign’s specified audience.

How do movie marketers drive revenue in a changing market and industry?

At a time when the pressure remains to drive people to opening weekend (and beyond), it’s important to understand what actions, tools and resources actually help attract the right audience. For any movie premiere, there’s typically a lot of wasted marketing and advertising, as a quarter of the U.S. and Canada populations say they never go to the theater.

Driving purchases isn’t about being everywhere all the time. It’s far more important to reach an audience of actual movie-ticket buyers in relevant, personalized ways at crucial times, and likely in combination with other media buying.

At Conversant, we’ve run more than 50 media and entertainment campaigns, including a wide range of campaigns for movie premieres that drove ticket sales.

Let’s look at key learnings from those box-office campaigns and discuss four insights for your next campaign to maximize ticket purchases and return on ad spend (ROAS).

RESPONDING TO CHANGE

Movie-ticket buyer or movie buyer

Conversion

Additive to a campaign or net-new potential reach outside of existing partners and media efforts.

Limiting the number of impressions delivered per unique individual across all their devices, based on media strategy and performance objectives.

A marketing platform that uses online and offline data to build rich, privacy-protected consumer profiles, allowing for accurate, long-lasting connections to people across all their devices and channels—as opposed to guesswork and temporary connections.

Definitions

Incrementality

Frequency cap

People-based platform

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INSIGHT 1: MORE TIME = MORE OPPORTUNITIESMany opening weekend campaigns are heavy on advertising on industry sites the week prior to the film’s release. That’s when moviegoers are making considerations for weekend movies, and when they’re able to buy tickets and secure their theater seats. The full scope of the campaign typically starts several weeks out and has executions across digital platforms, including social media and other apps and sites.

For digital advertising specifically, we’ve found that the ideal campaign length should span the weeks up to and including the premiere, as well as the week after the premiere—around 25–32 days in total.

Ideal campaign length is around four weeks leading up to, and including, opening weekend.

Continuous messaging over a longer period of time keeps the movie top-of-mind for movie-ticket buyers as they consider their options.

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VIEWER ATTENTION IS ADVISED

Start earlier, get bigger results

250

200

150

100

50

19 20 23 24 25 27 31 32 34 37

Campaign + measurement window in days

Ind

ex

Conversion Rate ROAS

25–32day campaign had ROAS that over-indexed

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INSIGHT 2:INCREASE MESSAGING, INCREASE CONVERSIONS

Conversion Rate ROAS

3-3.5 3.5-4 4-4.5

250

200

150

100

50

Persistence is key. We found that conversion rates are stronger when someone sees a message for a new movie 3.5+ times.

Of course, a key component of this is being able to identify known movie-ticket buyers, and then being able to connect with them as an individual 3.5+ times, controlling for frequency across all their unique devices, including laptops, phones, tablets and connected TVs, for maximum impact on box office sales.

The capacity to connect with someone multiple times relies on knowing their purchasing habits and all their devices and channels. For example, you’d want to message a known movie buyer on a website two weeks before a premiere, and then connect with them again while they’re checking the weekend weather or playing a game on their commute home from work the day before opening weekend.

And for maximum efficiency on each extra impression, you must know these consumers as real people, not as devices and cookies, and understand their interests and past purchases. That way you’ll always reach the right movie buyers—and no one else.

3 or fewer

messages per person can hinder campaign

performance

3.5–4.5messages per person

is the most efficient for increasing conversions

Message a single person more than three times to increase conversions.

To control for frequency, it’s critical to know who individuals are across sites and devices.

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VIEWER ATTENTION IS ADVISED

When a potential moviegoer sees digital media promoting a movie 3.5+ times, their likelihood to convert increases

Frequency overall

Ind

ex

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INSIGHT 3:MOVIE BUYERS ARE EVERYWHERE ONLINEAt the end of the day, movie buyers are people. They use the internet and internet-connected devices as much as anyone else. If you can identify the right ones for your specific release, you can work with partners to message them across publishers and devices.

Some of our campaigns include multi-partner measurement, where we tag all the partners running digital campaigns for the studio. This gives us insight into the reach, frequency, audience overlap, conversion rate and ROAS for movie-focused publishers. We’ve found that these sites drive strong conversions and ROAS, but their ability to reach movie-ticket buyers, and to do this at scale during a specific window of time, is limited to the size of their own platforms. This limits their ability to reach an audience on a consistent and persistent basis or scale the audience during crucial windows like opening weekend.

Ad views on these sites are dependent on people actually visiting, and many site visitors are just entertainment enthusiasts who may not go to the movies often. Successful box office campaigns prioritize reaching movie-ticket buyers based on behavioral data and past purchases, not based on affinity for movies in general. Movie marketers should connect with in-market movie buyers across the sites, apps and channels they use most, based on their own preferences, habits and behaviors.

Start with known movie-ticket buyers. Previous movie-ticket purchases are the best indicator of whether or not someone is likely to go to the movies in the future.

Don’t wait for your audience to visit industry sites, and don’t assume that all industry site visitors are movie-ticket buyers.

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VIEWER ATTENTION IS ADVISED

Monthly unique visitorscomScore Plan Metrix® Multi-Platform, June 2018, U.S.

70.1M

7.6M

2.3M

14.1M 10.1M

51.9M

4.5M

5

50Mknown movie-ticket buyers

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INSIGHT 4:LOOK BEYOND OPENING WEEKEND

Initial audience Opening weekend Week 2 Campaign

Many marketing campaigns focus solely on bringing movie buyers in for opening weekend. While there are numerous business reasons that make opening weekend a priority, there’s value in keeping digital marketing campaigns running for a full week post–opening weekend. According to Box Office Mojo, 67% of total box office sales for the top 100 movies in 2017 occurred after opening weekend. The numbers also show that many avid movie-ticket buyers wait until after opening weekend to actually see a movie.

And the numbers show that extending your campaign into week 2 pays off.

When opening weekend campaigns funded digital ads for week 2, those second-week campaigns earned an average of 56% more incremental box office transactions in their second-week share than campaigns that didn’t earmark dollars for that additional week. We know this because we continue to measure campaigns’ transactions a full week after the messaging ends to fully understand box office conversions, whether they do a funded week 2 campaign or not.

Of course, week 2 conversions can be influenced by a wide range of factors, including critic and viewer movie reviews, as well as other media. But on the whole, campaigns that extend through week 2 see higher returns.

Extending digital ads through week 2 pays off at the box office and for your campaign ROAS.

Optimize your campaign by removing converted audience members in the second week.

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VIEWER ATTENTION IS ADVISED

Opening weekend ticket sales Week 2 ticket sales

Campaign continues during week 2

Campaign ends opening weekend

2nd week sales add 60% to

box office revenue

2nd week sales add 116% to

box office revenue

$ $ $

$ $

$

$$ $

+20.5%new indviduals

messaged

Converted ticket buyers don’t see

additional messages

Initial audience Opening weekend Week 2 campaign

Week 2 extensions filter out converted buyers and message new people

Funded week 2 campaigns add 116% to second-week revenue

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After positive acclaim at film festivals, A24 was looking to market their movie, Hereditary, in a unique way: they weren’t going to spend money on TV advertising and instead focus on niche media coupled with innovative marketing campaigns.

They came to Conversant as a partner because we could help them reach their niche audience online. We connected them with movie-ticket buyers who would be interested in this specific film based on their past purchase behavior and known preferences.

The film had a $10M opening weekend with no TV advertising whatsoever, and Conversant was one of a short list of partners that helped make this happen.

CASE STUDY: HEREDITARY

204K+measured

transactions

$3.7M+measured revenue

$10.6ROAS

4.8M uniques

messaged

22.8Mimpressions

delivered

The Hereditary campaign started 2.5 weeks prior to opening weekend We extended the campaign through week 2 and added a continuity week of purchase measurement to fully measure conversions.

4.31%conversion

rate

This film exceeded horror-category benchmarks, with a 4.31% conversion rate and $10.60 ROAS.

A week 2 extension contributed to a twofold increase in transactions and revenue compared to opening weekend.

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VIEWER ATTENTION IS ADVISED

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Box office campaigns shouldn’t be one-and-done. The audience created for opening weekend is often still relevant for the home entertainment release or for a movie in a similar genre.

Lots of tools were used in the Hereditary example that can be reused to reconnect with that audience in different ways.

You can see how some (or all) of the above insights could be applied to the Hereditary home release, or for a similar horror movie from the same studio.

Working with a partner that maintains persistent, years-long connections to your audience allows you to build on this data over time by adding in new ticket purchases and location data for each person. This can be an efficient complement to your existing media and PR to help get people to the theater.

THE LIFECYCLE OF THE MOVIE BUYER

Hereditary audience insights:

25 and younger were most likely to see the film, but males over 25 were also likely to purchase

Those who saw Hereditary are frequent moviegoers

Mondays and Thursdays were the most likely days to over-index

7pm and later were the most likely times to see the film

Over-indexed in ethnic categories for horror films

Indexed a bit older than average for horror movies

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Many market factors are making it more difficult than ever to find and connect with the right audience for each movie and drive them to opening weekend.

Use these insights to ensure success with your next box office campaign:

SOME FINAL ADVICE

1More time = more opportunties

Start early with your marketing. Campaigns that lasted 25–32 days had optimal conversions, showing that many avid movie buyers need regular reminders about your film in order to purchase for opening weekend.

2Increase messaging, increase conversions

Make sure you can reach your audience at least 3.5 times across devices. Conversions increase with increased messaging.

3Movie buyers are everywhere online

Movie-ticket buyers are people. Work to find them on the websites, apps and channels they visit throughout the day, not just industry-specific publishers.

4Look beyond opening weekend

Extending campaigns through week 2 has a measurable impact on conversions after opening weekend.

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Ready to sell more movie tickets? Connect with us today.

For media and press inquires, please contact PR@conversantmedia.com

Remember to consider the lifecycle of the movie buyer. Reuse and build on your data, audience and insights for home entertainment and future releases.

ABOUT CONVERSANTConversant® is the digital media arm of Epsilon® and a leader in personalized digital marketing. We help the world’s biggest companies grow by creating personalized experiences that deliver higher returns for brands and greater satisfaction for people. We offer a fully integrated personalization platform, personalized media programs and one of the world’s largest affiliate marketing networks—CJ Affiliate™—all fueled by a deep understanding of what motivates people to engage, connect and buy.

For more information visit conversantmedia.com

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