AMC is finally coming clean - about something we all knew anyway:
AMC now warns moviegoers to expect ‘25-30 minutes’ of ads and trailers
Making it easier to arrive when your movie is actually about to start.
AMC Theatres is making it easier for moviegoers to know the actual start time of their film screening and avoid sitting through lengthy ads. A new notice has started appearing when people purchase tickets via the AMC website, warning that “movies start 25-30 minutes after showtime.”
This already mirrors the [estimated runtime of AMC’s preshow content, which includes ads and trailers, but now customers will be better informed if they want to arrive a little later without missing the start of their movie. This small change also tracks with [a report made by The Hollywood Reporter last week] that said AMC will soon start “addressing the preshow on its ticketing platforms.”
Ironically, AMC was the only national chain to refuse to show ads when the trend began because “they thought it would negatively affect the moviegoing experience.” (It does.)
Depending on market size and other factors, playing ads adds about $20,000 per screen annually.
That’s it? Only $20,000 per screen per year? I would have thought it would have been more.
I myself think, if possible, ad load should increase at theaters. Anything that can financially support this debt-heavy model is a win for content producers.
I don’t think studios pay to place trailers, but maybe they should sometimes.
Question is, how could these things be implemented? What would be the best ads that people wouldn’t mind watching? A local comedian doing a show so you see a three-minute sample of a set? During Halloween, a three-minute movie of a local haunted house/hayride attraction? During Christmas, some event that is Christmas-themed? I would agree Pepsi spots might not cut it, but whatever it would be, more ads would be optimal.
The films are licensed by the studio to be shown “uncut and uncensored.” The movie house controls the screen before and after, but not “during.”
But in one sense that has already happened with product placement (see: James Bond films for the most egregious examples). But at least they (sometimes) try to make it unobtrusive. In that case the money flows to the producers, not to the movie house.
The linked story mentions that advertisers can pay for “platinum placement”, which are the two spots nearest the beginning of the movie.
The most obnoxious, blatant, and frequent, placements were in the original “Back To The Future”. GAH!! One ad after another. You couldn’t miss the closeup of the guy putting a cassette in his walkdude, first showing that it was a Maxell cassette, then moving the walkdude so you could clearly see the Aiwa label. Or the car time warp scene in the mall parking lot, with the Penny’s sign lit up in the background, in multiple shots.
Until advertisers pay them enough. Remember when “Masterpiece Theater” only showed a slide with a logo, and a narrator saying “this program is made possible by a grant from Mobil Corporation”? Now, you sit through 5 minutes of advertising. Same with “This Old House”, ad after ad after ad.
And, who pays for all that advertising? The people who buy the products. Don’t even try to tell me “the advertising makes the price you pay less”. BAH!!! Not in the aggregate. We are supporting an entire universe of people who should have been shipped out on the B Ark.
Funny thing, most of the Bollywood movies that I go see have a 10 minute intermission midway through the film. They actually put a large timer up on the screen that counts down the minutes with a second hand going round and round 10 times for each of the 10 minutes. There is NO advertising other than I think the name of the film production house(s) on the screen at that time. Seems to me like a wasted 10 minutes that would be better used for advertising. Since many Bollywood movies are quite long, having a 10 minute break to go to the bathroom, and then to refill the popcorn and beverage, is quite welcome.
One problem with the 23 to 28 minute (I time it regularly at my theater) period before a film actually begins is that SOMETIMES it isn’t 23 to 28 minutes! A few weeks ago, for one of the movies, it was only 15 minutes, so I missed the first 5 or 6 minutes of the movie (It was “Day of Reckoning”, not a very good movie, so no great loss missing 5 minutes of it.) Also, sometimes the Bollywood movies have very short preview/advertisement periods before they actually start. I’ve seen as short as 8 minutes.
Maybe they will adopt the cadence of the evening network “news”", after the initial 10 minutes of news and “severe weather” hysteria: 3 minutes of advertising, then 30 seconds of content, then 3 minutes of adverts, then 30 seconds of content, repeat until they run out the clock.
I have to disagree here. They used the brands (mostly) to show how the time had changed back to 1956. What good did showing a Walkman do, when SONY doesn’t even sell Walkman anymore?
The guys running out of the Texaco station to clean the windshield and fill the car was hilarious, and an obvious throwback to a different time, now that nobody helps you with anything. So yes there were some “product placement” things in the film, but I didn’t find any of them annoying. “Give me a Tab”? Do they even sell Tab anymore?
If you hated that, you’re really gonna hate “F1” (Fabulous flick, BTW.) There are logos on the cars, logos on the drivers, logos on the racetracks, logos on the transport vehicles. Brad Pitt might even have a couple tattooed on his back, I didn’t look that closely. And yet, since that’s how that industry operates, none of them got in the way (at least for me.) I’m going back, and I might see it in IMAX this time (as was suggested in their marketing in the first place.) Really good, unless “logos” get your dander up.
“Plan Steve to make baseball team owners even richer” takes several cues from racing. Currently, many team uniforms now have advertising on them. The Detroit Tigers have a “Meijer” patch on their sleeve. One of the teams in Texas shills for Occidental Petroleum. The Nationals, that beat up on the Tigers last night, promote AARP. And they no longer wait for the end of the inning to place ads. Now, during play, they shrink the picture of the game down to an inset, while most of the screen is taken over by advertising.
“Plan Steve” goes farther, where team owners require players to bring sponsors with them. Then every time each player comes to bat, we hear an ad for that player’s sponsor. Every time a pitcher starts an inning, we hear an ad from that pitcher’s sponsor. Team managers will be pressured to use the players with the best sponsors, so the team owner pockets more ad revenue.
Steve…it’s easy to shift the brain into “MBA mode”
I have a friend that LOVED Tab. So much so that when it was on the wane, he would search all nearby stores to stock up on it. Not only that, but when we drove to upstate NY to ski (what I did wasn’t quite “skiing”, but it was a hill, with snow, and lifts, etc), he went out in the evening to all the local stores to find some Tab to add to his stash. I found Tab to be disgusting, with a nasty and weird chemical taste. But I do like Coke Zero nowadays. Don’t drink it very often, but when I do, I find it to be quite tasty and satisfying.
Even at the live games, the screens play various ads during play in some places. And for the broadcast, they can “snip” out sections of the walls to insert their own ads, presumably more lucrative nation ones instead of less lucrative local ones. Ad tech is really quite advanced nowadays.
