Forbes on Movie Marketing

Great piece by Louis Hau on how studios are using the Net to market movies...(Thanks to Anne Thompson for the link)

It says that studios aren't yet devoting as much money as other advertisers to Internet marketing, but that young audience members say now that Internet info influences them just as much as TV ads and in-theater previews.

From the piece:

According to consumer exit surveys conducted during [the] opening weekends [of 'Superbad' and 'Resident Evil'], more moviegoers cited the Internet as a motivating source of information than any other media, [Columbia Tristar exec Dwight] Caines said. Of the Superbad audience, 73% cited the Internet, 72% cited TV commercials and 67% cited in-theater previews. For Extinction, 64% of respondents cited the Internet, 56% said TV commercials and 55% said in-theater trailers.

Search marketing was part of the Superbad campaign, which entailed buying the names of troubled celebrities as keywords and placing text ads for the movie that read, "Are you Superbad?" In a first for the studio, it also built a widget consumers could embed on their blogs or Facebook pages to view video clips and to get screensavers, ringtones and other related content.