Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: What to charge for advertising

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Posted by Christopher Lani (Member # 7952) on 04-12-2015, 06:16 AM:

Hey Everyone! I was wondering what to charge a client that wants to play a 1 minute MP4 video for his food truck. I am in a small market in Ely, Nevada. Less than 5K people in the county. I m the only Theater within 180 miles and we are a single screen theater. I have one nightly showing of first run movies at 7pm with matinees Sat and Sun at 1pm for any kids movies we run. Just curious if there is a rule of thumb on this sort of thing. Any input would be helpful. Thanks again!

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 04-12-2015, 11:52 AM:

I think it's just what the market will bear combined with how you present it, taking into consideration the value of theatrical advertising.

If you're getting, say, 200 people per week and you charge $1000 a year to run an ad, that's only a little over 9 cents per "impression." Impressions are what makes an ad successful -- repeated impressions translates into name recognition and brand awareness, which translates into sales.

Plus, impressions from a theatrical ad are way better than a newspaper ad because the audience is looking at the screen (they can't turn the page) and the message is repeated every time they go to the movies.

If the guy was to spend $1000 on an ad in the big daily newspaper, he'd probably get an ad about half a page in size, but it would only run ONE time. And if the paper has 20,000 or 200,000 subscribers, the salesperon might say "Look how many impressions you're getting!" But many (or most) of those readers would be likely to either miss seeing the ad altogether or just skim over it or whatever. So a newspaper impression isn't near as valuable as a theatrical one.

If you are going to run this guy's ad and no others, then the value skyrockets for obvious reasons.

One other thought -- you might consider asking the food truck owner to give you a shorter ad. One minute is too long for a theatrical ad, in my opinion. Even 30 seconds is stretching it although if you're only showing the one ad, it might be OK. Just my personal 2¢ on that.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 04-12-2015, 12:13 PM:

The cost of film prints is no longer a barrier to local theater advertising, and there is now an army of "independent production companies" in every small town, that consist of guys with a D-SLR and a Mac who will make the content with an equally low financial barrier to entry. Therefore, you'd expect local theater advertising to be taking off on a significant scale, now.

Therefore I wonder how long it'll be before middle-man agencies spring up to broker local theater advertising onto screens (negotiating with both independents and the home offices of chains, if necessary), pitching a service whereby Christopher doesn't have to do the sort of negotiating he describes - he simply refers the food truck to the agency he's signed on with, and then some time later the DCP and a check arrive at his theater. Maybe such agencies already exist.

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 04-12-2015, 01:56 PM:

Christopher - did/do you play any other ads, or would this be your first non-trailer pre-show content?

- Carsten

Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 04-12-2015, 02:49 PM:

I would say something along the lines of $150 per month. And offer a discount for a long term contract paid in advance. Something like $1500 for a year paid in advance. This saves you the hassle of month to month billing, plus it gives you a larger chunk of money up front.

If you go much higher than that, you will have a difficult time attracting the smaller businesses - such as a food truck.

For the sake of convenience, I would highly recommend converting that MP4 to a DCP, that way you can just schedule it in your play list. As an MP4, you're probably going to have to play it with a secondary media player, then switch back to the DCinema server for the feature. If you were running a slide show of stills, this would probably be just fine, because you could set the media player to repeat on a loop and not be concerned with where the ads first hit the screen. But since you'll want the ad to start from the beginning each time, you would have to actually have someone in the booth ready to play the ad, then switch.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 04-12-2015, 03:56 PM:

Don't forget, you can also float the price based on how close it is to the feature. If you were buying a "rolling stock" ad and knew it was within 5 minutes of show time versus somewhere in the the 30-minutes price to show time...would you pay more to be in that last 5 minutes? The odds that eyeballs are now looking at your ad in anticipation of the actual show beginning are MUCH higher...heck there are going to be more people in the auditorium at T-minus 5 than T-minuse 30 on any given show time.

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 04-12-2015, 04:25 PM:

BTW - does anyone know wether these 'local' ads have to be rated in order to be played? Because in germany we are not allowed to play unrated ads in front of any rated movie. How much will the rating cost in the US, is there a special price for local ads? Because here in germany there is a special lower rating fee for local advertising, around 80US$ per clip.

- Carsten

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 04-12-2015, 05:22 PM:

In the US, the ratings system is voluntary and has no force of law. Theatres are free to play unrated material if they want. The MPAA will rate trailers, but, to my knowledge, they do not provide ratings for commercials. They do charge for the ratings service and it is not cheap. Thus, many low-budget films are distributed without ratings.

As a practical matter, most theatrical commercials are just television commercials that have been converted to 35mm or DCP format, so they generally meet the content requirements for broadcast (no "bad" language, no nudity, no excessive violence). I have never seen or heard of a theatrical commercial that was not appropriate for the movie that it preceeded, although the advertisers will occasionally request that their commercials not be shown with certain films (one that comes to mind is a Marines commercial that was not to be shown with Jarhead; I am sure that there are more recent examples, too).

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 04-12-2015, 05:25 PM:

quote: Leo Enticknap
Therefore I wonder how long it'll be before middle-man agencies spring up to broker local theater advertising onto screens (negotiating with both independents and the home offices of chains, if necessary), pitching a service whereby Christopher doesn't have to do the sort of negotiating he describes - he simply refers the food truck to the agency he's signed on with, and then some time later the DCP and a check arrive at his theater. Maybe such agencies already exist.

Around here, this happened already before the arrival of the DCP. A small advertising firm signed up a bunch of theaters and put a video projector on a DVD in front of the main show. Nowadays they deliver their localized content in DCP form.

quote: Carsten Kurz
BTW - does anyone know wether these 'local' ads have to be rated in order to be played? Because in germany we are not allowed to play unrated ads in front of any rated movie. How much will the rating cost in the US, is there a special price for local ads? Because here in germany there is a special lower rating fee for local advertising, around 80US$ per clip.

Yeah, German rating systems, who ever came up with that? I love those censored edits on public TV... Green goo instead of blood in computer games. [Wink]

In the U.S. there is no mandatory rating system, and AFAIK only Tennessee has a law that actually refers to MPAA ratings.

Even in the Netherlands, where there is a somewhat mandatory rating system, advertisements are not required to be rated before shown to the public.

Posted by Christopher Lani (Member # 7952) on 04-12-2015, 06:33 PM:

All excellent and valid points! Thank you all so much. Yes. This is the first non trailer ad I have run since taking over the place. The old owner had some ad firm out of Salt lake playing slides thorugh a DCP and they sucked! So I Just started playing various content before the film our just original music or public domain cartoons. There are a few other factors at play. There is no local tv station so as a result there are 0 tv ads for any local businesses. We are really the only venue for advertising if they want to have an ad. The food truck guy has a son that produced the ad and did a great job. He wants to produce more commericials for some local businesses and non profits. He will give me a 20% comission on any one I get to produce an ad through him. Not only that, they want to pay me $300 a month for playing the ad! I would not do it if I did not like his product and I want to be very careful about the ads I do place in front of the trailers. Many of my customers thank me for not showing B.S. national ads so I will have to be aware of what my customers want. The ad is actually only 39 seconds and is very entertaining. Once again, you guys have proven a most valuable resource. Thanks again! More comments are more than welcome!Justin, how would using DCP work to integrate the file into my play list. I now use a USB flash drive in my blue ray player that goes into my Geffen scaler to play. I use the Dolby setup through my Christie Projector. I thought the file had to be in Jpeg2000 format to play on my playlist with the trailer and feature. I am a novice at all of this and am overjoyed with the idea of learning how to make the most out of my system!

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 04-12-2015, 10:26 PM:

Christopher - you would just convert the commercial from an mp4 to a DCP using a program like DCP-O-Matic. (It's a free download and very easy to use.) You could create Scope and Flat versions of it, and then you can load it in your server like any other content.

Your server directory should have a folder for advertising. If you select the "ADV" tag when you create your DCP, it will automatically drop the commercial into your advertising folder when you load it on your server.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 04-13-2015, 05:59 AM:

Mike, on the Dolby server, there are not any separate folders for the content type. Instead, there are tabs that allow one to sort by content type (same sort of thing) including an "All" tab so you can sort all of them without respect to content type.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 04-13-2015, 12:58 PM:

quote: Justin Hamaker
For the sake of convenience, I would highly recommend converting that MP4 to a DCP, that way you can just schedule it in your play list.

Amen to that. Christopher: there are various DCP creation tools for desktop computers available, many of which are freeware and several of which would take care of converting ProRes or H.264 files to DCP for playlist integration quickly and easily. I've used DCP-o-Matic and OpenDCP: both work very well.

quote: Carsten Kurz
BTW - does anyone know wether these 'local' ads have to be rated in order to be played?

The US has already been covered. In Britain, the censorship framework for theatres is essentially the same one as was created by the Cinematograph Act 1909. Movie theaters (cinemas) have to have a license from the town or city council in order legally to take money from the public in exchange for showing them movies. The local authorities essentially subcontract censorship to the British Board of Film Classification, which is a private business that filmmakers pay to rate their movies. The cinema's license typically says that anything shown must have a BBFC rating (and age admittances in compliance with it, e.g. no letting 12-year olds into a 15-rated film) unless it has been approved separately or age-rated differently by the local authority. This arrangement is why you still occasionally read stories about some tiny village in the wilds of North Wales lifting the ban on The Life of Brian that was imposed in 1979 because of objections from the church.

At the first cinema where I worked, the local authority had a standing policy that ads for local businesses (which had to be locally owned - the Wimbledon branch of McDonald's didn't count!) had a standing exemption, and we could just show them with anything. This did cause a controversy once, when a nightclub put an ad on that included stock footage of scantily-clad women dancing, and parents who took their kids to see Santa Claus: The Movie complained to the council.

Posted by Dave Young (Member # 8390) on 04-13-2015, 07:48 PM:

In terms of how much money to charge, there are some "standard" advertising rates for cinema. I've seen all kinds of breakdown, but surprisingly, local ads can often command a higher price than national ads. They're just harder to track down and require sales efforts. We're working on a solution to make this easier for theaters.

In the meantime, here are some guidelines. National cinema advertising is starting to fall down to television rates. In online advertising (web, desktop stuff) we use the term CPM to represent the cost per thousand impressions. You can expect to earn from $30 to $50 CPM for national ads, and up to $65 for local. How does it break down?

The national average is 19.6 people per audience, round it up to 20. So on average, every time that ad gets shown, it gets shown to 20 people. Using that logic, it takes around 50 shows to hit 1000 views of the ad and earn $65. Then again, if the ad shows early in the preshow, less people tend to see it. And of course on the weekends, more like 150 people can see it per view. So the average works out.

Theaters average 4.5 shows per day, so those views add up quickly. That in a nutshell is how to convert your ad value to a CPM number. Your situation is very different in that your real estate is probably more valuable than most, due to scarcity! You can probably charge anything you want for it, ie what the market will bear as was said above.

Many theaters run packages for weeks or months with a discount for a longer lock-in. The later in the preshow the ad shows, the more valuable it is. Cinematic video is arguably the most premium form of captive audience advertising out there, so don't sell it cheap [Smile]

Posted by Lindsay Morris (Member # 1430) on 04-15-2015, 02:48 AM:

Christopher,
Like Mike says DCP O Matic is quite a good useful program & freeware to boot.
I am using it to present my screen advert slides many of which are the artwork lifted from the old 70mm transparencies mounted on 85mm sq glass slides from the old Cinemeccancia automatic slide unit.
I wrestled with just how to do the switch & even contemplated keeping the slide machine but in the end decided it was digital or nuffin.
Glad I did as DCP O M works fine [thumbsup]

even though I had one corrupt series of slides crash the server...NOW I screen test EVERY update and trust nothing as I lost 2 days of hunting as to WHY with that one.

I also add sound clips to each screen slide to smarten them up and have also been able to drop a MP4 video clip into DCP O M and make a small moving clip.

When you add the sound if it is coming from simple stereo (L & R only) then DCP O M allows you to add them together into a Centre channel and also adjust levels plus if it just music you can also send it the surrounds...dialogue is awful though if added to the surrounds due to no facility to insert a time lag.

I do it all on my MAC and save to a thumb drive and stuff it into the DSS100 no worries at all.
Just make sure that you fill out the DCP info so it appears as an advert or Short or whatever you wish to call it to make it easier to identify on the server.
As a digital newbie am very pleased with my efforts so far and the more you practice with DCP O M the easier it becomes.

PM or email me if you would like a bit more info on how to.

I may have to increase my screening fees for adds as my "impressions" rates are less than 0.05C..would seem I am not charging enough.
[Smile]

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 04-15-2015, 11:50 AM:

quote: Lindsay Morris
I do it all on my MAC and save to a thumb drive and stuff it into the DSS100 no worries at all.

Does the DSS100 not let you FTP stuff into it through the LAN?

The 200 certainly does, and I prefer to ingest smaller DCPs that way. At one of our two sites I've already had to replace the cat915z front panel USB board once because the repeated insertion and removal of flash sticks wore it out, and the time is rapidly approaching when the other one will need swapping out as well.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 04-15-2015, 12:31 PM:

Why not just get a USB hub and attach the flash drives to that? At least that way, the wear item becomes cheap and easily replaceable.

Posted by Lindsay Morris (Member # 1430) on 04-15-2015, 06:41 PM:

My MAC is at home and cinema is 16kms away so thumb drives it has to be. NO other way.
Drives me insane at times getting sound levels JUST right as can only really check sound when played via server & projector..with lamp off. Take notes of which clips need adjusting and head back home to tweak..good enough for a seasonal venue.
For short term ads IF levels are a problem I tweak them in the playlist and have the CP650 do a set level for each clip and keep notes of what clip needs what Volume setting to repeat each week.
Just one little foible of the DCP O M program but on the improve I believe.
A USB HUB is on the cards at the cinema with it sitting on top of the NEC 1600 as the server USB socket is at the bottom of the rack.
Not even good internet coverage @ cinema location but no big deal being a standalone venue but TeamViewer allows external access..slow but reliable enough. [Smile]

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 04-15-2015, 07:15 PM:

Lindsay - it is easy and quick to create two or three different versions of each clip, with different volume settings spaced e.g. 6dB apart. DCP-o-matic will only recompile the audio. You can name these clips according to your volume setting, then just play the one that fits and delete the others.

Getting volume right from different types of source audio is always a problem if you do not have a calibrated sound system as a reference attached to your Mac. This is no problem specific to DCP-o-matic.

- Carsten

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 04-16-2015, 05:41 AM:

Yes, you can FTP to a DSS100 exactly as you would a DSS200 or DSS220.

Posted by Andrew Thomas (Member # 7000) on 04-16-2015, 12:15 PM:

We handle all advertising sales ourselves. We charge $300 for 3 months, $1000 for 12 months. We only allow locally owned businesses to advertise. We used to do month to month, but it was a mess. We also now require professionally produced ad content as we would get these really ghetto powerpoint presentations in.

I have a video guy and a still guy that I usually refer people to if they don't have their own stuff.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 04-16-2015, 02:10 PM:

The ghetto Powerpoints are, I guess, the 21st century reincarnation of the 35mm local ads from the '70s and '80s (parodied in this trailer). Great if audiences find them funny, but not otherwise.

Scott - good point, especially as replacement cat916z boards cost $70 each.

As for the DSS100/200/220 and networking, it's a pain that they don't support DNS and therefore that FTP ingestion over the Internet is difficult, especially using a consumer NAS server with a URL add-on.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 04-16-2015, 02:55 PM:

See now...one would think that they WOULDN'T want content to be moving about over the Internet!!! As it is, we normally try to protect the content as much as possible.

Posted by Lindsay Morris (Member # 1430) on 04-16-2015, 09:50 PM:

Carsten, What you suggest is pretty much what I have done after a while this season but I do it in 3dB steps.
But some voices seem to be able to beat the Show Audio facility in DCP O M and come thru almost on overload point as far as the digital system is concerned.
Then just when you think you have it sussed one clip comes over "orrible".
Other than that DCP O M is a really easy tool to use and from what I understand fills a very much needed niche for small fry willing to have a go.
I like it. [thumbsup]

Posted by Christopher Lani (Member # 7952) on 04-19-2015, 05:05 PM:

Thank you all so much. DCP OMATIC worked like a charm. Looks great and was a breeze to load. What a fantastic tool! [Big Grin]

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 04-20-2015, 05:53 AM:

quote: Lindsay Morris
But some voices seem to be able to beat the Show Audio facility in DCP O M and come thru almost on overload point as far as the digital system is concerned.

DCP-o-matic isn't a professional audio mixing tool and perceived loudness is a rather "complex" (and subjective) concept.

Without a screening room nearby, the best ghetto way to get it somewhat right would be using a "good" DCP and a DCP player on your computer as reference.

quote: Leo Enticknap
The ghetto Powerpoints are, I guess, the 21st century reincarnation of the 35mm local ads from the '70s and '80s (parodied in this trailer). Great if audiences find them funny, but not otherwise.

You're referring to something like this or this? [Smile]

Rodriguez's and Tarantino's Grindhouse double feature cut also has some nice spoofs in between.