No Zapping These Commercials

Movie theaters have always been entertainment sanctuaries: dark rooms, comfy chairs, a cozy environment devoid of annoying commercials. Oops! Scratch the part about the commercials. Premovie ads, which used to draw boos when one or two would pop up before the coming attractions, seem to be multiplying by the week. National Cinema Network, a company that places commercials on a third of U.S. movie screens, reports a 48% increase in prefilm-commercial sales over the past year. The ads, which run from 15 to 90 seconds, are the current darlings of the ad world, in part because they seem to sink in. A Nielsen study of preshow commercials revealed that viewer recall was an impressive 80%. "We're seeing more of it because it works," says Todd Siegel, senior vice president of sales and marketing for Screenvision, which places ads on some 14,000 screens in the U.S. "Advertisers are always trying to deliver a message in an uncluttered environment to an attentive audience."

Theater ad packages are generally three or four minutes long, for products ranging from M&M's to the U.S. Army. The revenue stream is a plum for theater owners, who can earn as much as $4 million for five weeks of summer ads. But are they pushing the limit with moviegoers? Even some ad people are nervous. "It's a very delicate place to advertise," says Alex Bogusky, creative director for Crispin Porter + Bogusky, an agency in Miami that created prefilm BMW commercials. "People have paid money to go see a film. You can do real harm. You show up as an uninvited guest."