Where Are Advertisers? At the Movies

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But Chaney says all those screens can deliver audiences that rival those once only delivered by good old TV: Kia's cinema ad deals, with National CineMedia and its competitor Screenvision, guaranteed the carmaker that 60 million people would see its ad over the course of one month.

NO FAST-FORWARD, NO MUTE

There's also a brute fact about this business. "Cinema is one of the only places where the consumer can't make [an ad] go away," says Hall. And, saysanalyst James Marsh of investment banker Piper Jaffray, movies also attract a younger audience "that TV has had difficulty reaching." (One of National CineMedia's top ad categories is the U.S. military, which obviously is only concerned with reaching young men and women.) And a healthier-than-expected year for movies, with box office attendance and revenue both up in the double digits, means that in many cases cinema ad firms are "overdelivering"—more people are seeing the ads than the advertisers paid for, says Marsh. (This is not a claim many TV networks can make.) The company also gets around 85% of its ad revenue from national advertisers, which have fared better this downturn than their hard-hit local counterparts.

If TV networks continue to command premiums for shrinking audiences because of a scarcity of inventory—there are only so many spots available on American Idol, after all—it's a game cinemas can play, too. Movie houses still keep ads to a (relative) minimum, which, analysts say, also works in their favor. And one simple reality doesn't hurt either: If you believe, as I do, that one reason marketers stick with television is because they love to imagine their product starring on TV—well, then, isn't it even better if their products become movie stars?

Fine is BusinessWeek's MediaCentric columnist and Fine On Media blogger .

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