News

NY Post: 5 Studios Buy Costly Super Bowl Ads

Dec. 5, 2007 -- Despite all the hype about Internet marketing enabling cuts in movie advertising costs, five movie studios have bought slots in the Super Bowl telecast in Feb. 3, which cost $2.7 million each, according to the New York Post newspaper. It cites as confirmed buys for Paramount’s Iron Man, and Sony superhero Hancock starring Will Smith and comedy You Don’t Mess With Zohan. The Post article’s math is a little fuzzy identifying only Universal as another buyer, but indications are that five movies will have ads.

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 www.nypost.com/seven/12052007/business/flicks_kick_off_419684.htm

Note from author Robert Marich. Movies have a short “shelf life” in theaters (typically 4-6 weeks), so distributors are desperate for certainty that advertising delivers the first time around. Given the Hollywood writers strike might hurt regular TV programming (bringing repeat programming), there’s uncertainty that regular TV will aggregate big audiences consistently in the months ahead. So the Super Bowl becomes more attractive because it pulls consistently huge audiences, no matter what teams play, and isn’t impacted by the writers strike.

Paramount's Iron Man, which is based on the Marvel Comic, opens May 2, 2008, as the "05.02.08" tagline at bottom of this teaser poster indicates.