Today DCM is digital – with both Sony and Tesco amongst the first to benefit from the faster, more flexible and more creative cinema medium.
The move heralds a bold new era in cinema advertising, with brands already taking up the options of shorter lead-times and greater freedom to choose, change and adapt messaging. Sony Home Entertainment is using the new flexibility to rotate copy for its DVD release of “Breaking Bad Series 4”. Ad spots running over the weekend prior to launch will carry ‘Out Monday’ copy before switching to ‘Out Now’ from Monday.
Tesco is also taking advantage of DCM’s quicker scheduling to run its ‘Quality Apples’ food campaign from today after research demonstrated the success of its previous cinema campaign. Other advertisers are likewise employing DCM’s new ability to start cinema campaigns on any day of the week and shorter copy deadlines, now reduced from three weeks to one, in order to coincide with other media activity.
DCM’s move to Digital operations is to offer greater flexibility and improved speed of response to cinema advertisers who spent £169 million in 2011 (Source: Nielsen NMR).
The switch to digital scheduling now means 70,000 playlists can be generated in seven minutes at a rate of 10,000 per minute or 166 per second. Prior to digital DCM produced 3,000 playlists per week, meaning DCM now schedules 23 times the volume of playlists.
To prepare for the switchover the cinema industry has invested £200 million in 3000 digital projectors in cinemas across the UK as well as 2000 hours of software development and the installation of 250 satellite dishes.
DCM managing director, Simon Rees said: “It is rewarding to see how advertisers are embracing DCM’s switch to digital and tailoring the opportunities to their bespoke campaigns. We’re expecting the adoption of digital technology to trigger a huge period of change and creativity in cinema advertising. The new digital cinema advertising products will give creative advertisers unprecedented levels of speed and choice in how and when they can access and interact with the audience. Cinema remains the most impactful advertising medium offering a famously uninterrupted advertising experience for brands in an increasingly cluttered media world.”
Angela Porter, head of grocery advertising at Tesco said: “The research around our previous Quality Apples campaign demonstrated that cinema added value to our schedule. As well as helping us to access pockets of hard-to-reach consumers, cinema drove positive opinions of Tesco amongst both shoppers and non-shoppers. For this reason we decided to repeat the food campaign, taking advantage of cinema’s new faster, digital scheduling ability.”
The new age of digital cinema advertising in short:
- Spots can be booked and scheduled by the day instead of weekly block bookings
- Campaigns can now start any day of the week
- Precision scheduling pin-points specific showing at specific screens at any site
- Copy delivery deadlines are reduced from three weeks to one across DCM’s estate
- Shorter lead-times and greater freedom opens possibilities for copy changes and rotation
More speed, more choice, more creativity