Roll the tape: What are the advantages and disadvantages of film advertising? 

Film advertising is an increasingly common method of marketing. Usually, big organisation houses create these short advertisements and then send them ton different cinemas to show to audiences before and after the main film they’re viewing. All methods of marketing have advantages and disadvantages: here are the pros and cons of film advertising. 

Advantages of film advertising

1. Marketers recognise that particularly before a film starts the audience are typically active or in other words not mere spectators. As the audience’s brains are focused and in the right place to consider new ideas or listen to different opinions, this provides the perfect opportunity for advertisements to be presented to them. This means that adverts are more likely to directly appeal to members of the audience and they’re more likely to take in the messages being offered. 
2. It’s a good way to help other advertising media. As a supplement to other forms of advertising like social media ads and billboards, film advertising is a great way to create awareness of the film whilst acting as a supporting mechanism. 
3. One of the key advantages of film advertising is that it’s low cost. When considering the return on investment, it works out very economical. 
4. The impact of film advertising goes way beyond that of other forms of advertising. Film ads have a long-lasting impact because the screen is the centre of the audience’s attention in contrast to social media campaigns where the ads don’t take centre stage and aren’t the primary focus.

Disadvantages of film advertising 

1. The coverage offered is often very limited. The local population benefits more from film advertising because when advertisers choose where to display ads they make a conscious decision about the location of that advertisement. The promotional campaign of any advertiser will only be visible to those that have visited the cinema close to them, cutting off the chances of you seeing a range of different adverts. 
2. Small organisations will struggle financially to employ this tactic. The costs of distribution and film making are extremely high and unless you’re a relatively large market, you’d struggle to finance the production of advertisement films. 
3. They have a short life span in comparison to other digital marketing mediums. The ads don’t have much of a chance to run meaning that only a limited number of people will be able to view them in the cinema before they disappear again.
4. Film ads can be both boring and irritating. In general, audiences view advertisements as an annoyance – something that’s in the way of them watching a film they’ve paid to view.  Also, audiences who are known to frequent the cinema often may get fed up with seeing the same advertisement multiple times and switch off when it comes to adverts as a whole. 

Roll the tape! Final thoughts

So, there you have it – just some of the advantages and disadvantages of film advertising. Now you have a clearer idea of the advantages and disadvantages of film advertising, you’ll be better able to decide which advertising medium is best for you and your company. As long as you tailor your choices to your circumstances and target audience, you are good to go.