Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Movie Ads On Radio

This is topic Movie Ads On Radio in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 08-11-2016, 10:29 AM:

I don't listen to a lot of radio anymore, mostly NPR. They will occasionally be sponsored by a movie that has NPR appeal, but not have full blown ads produced by the distributor.
This morning I happened to have on local talk radio in the car and there was a real live radio ad for a movie that opens nationally Friday, but not in this town.
This was during a local show, not a syndicated show or the national news break. And we are a pretty small market.
I have not heard a radio ad for a movie in years. Do they still do them in the major markets?
And FWIW, it's a newish small distributor of mostly art house stuff.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 08-11-2016, 11:29 AM:

They definitely do them here. Not every movie gets a radio spot, but the big ones do, as do the ones that appeal to the NPR crowd.

It is odd, though, that you would be hearing ads for a movie that is not showing in your market. Maybe the distributor did an ad buy with Clear Channel or some other owner of many stations and did not get to pick the markets in which it would be played? I don't really know how TV and radio spots are sold...is this even a possibility?

This, of course, leads to a new question: do buyers of ads get to pick the date and time and program where they will be played, or do they just buy X quantity of 60/30/15 second spots and get the ad played randomly X number of times? If I were buying an ad, I would obviously prefer the former; I would not want to waste money advertising on programs that appeal to males under 25 if I were selling a product that appealed to females over 40, for example.

Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 08-11-2016, 01:38 PM:

I don't know about a national ad buy, but locally the media outfits will pretty much slice and dice to give you the time slot you want (though obviously, some slots cost more than others). Random rotation is the cheapest.

Our local NPR's do a variation on slicing and dicing as they have fewer spots to play with.

I've got to talk to the distributor about another film, I'll see if they have a reason for buying a radio ad here. Although it is a movie about resistance fighters in WWII, so maybe it was just the correct demographic.