Cinemas today
The movie industry today is in a crucial position to leverage data and produce actionable insights. Keeping up with emerging trends, industry giants have begun offering loyalty programs and investing in data analytics to understand their audience better.
The cinema industry acknowledges gathering data as a strategic priority to stay relevant today. Data serves as the foundation for insight. For all its appeal, insight is only as valuable as the data it is derived from. Understanding the kind of data required to generate more nuanced insight will be highly beneficial. How can we obtain more refined data to offer higher value and stay competitive?
This can be achieved through a combination of data sources for mutual benefit or by conducting internal analysis and selling the insight gained rather than the data itself. Data can be sourced from various points in the cinema experience.
Advertisements
Corporate giants and popular brands are moving to automated solutions for advertisements. These are growing increasingly popular for their flexibility and reach. The speed and accuracy with which they compile feedback from target audience is unprecedented.
Gaining access to the right target demographic is tough. Online advertising is highly competitive with bids happening until the ad is screened. The cinema industry handles majority of advertisements manually even today. It’s time to look for more targeted, impactful adverts.
Exhibitors can introduce programmatic advertising inventory through collaboration with software providers. The partnership will not just be for exchange of data, but for increased viewership, advertising revenue, and performance.
For instance, an advertisement about a new restaurant would be akin to several thousand 25-35 year olds engaging with the brand on social media and living near the restaurant. With growing evidence that consumers prefer relevant advertisements, such an arrangement would enhance screen-time value, improve customer experience, and help forge stronger relationships with advertisers.
Trailers, teasers, and promotions
In most cases, exhibitors don’t reveal the trailers they play prior to the movies. While resistance to sharing the information could have been due to manual constraints in the past, reliable APIs can take care of this today.
Say, the studios receive information that 18-25 year olds made up 70% of the people that registered their interest in an upcoming feature after seeing the trailer. This offers an enormous advantage for their marketing team. While it is fair to think that if this information is needed, it can be paid and bought and it separates the cinema industry to disparate silos. The ultimate aim is to increase footfall in cinema.
Theatres and studios
At this point, movie theatres know who is watching what, where they are seated, what their favourite concession snacks are, and their favourite genre. Leveraging this information will result in small localized changes, such as a weekday discount for students, family nights on weekends, and more.
Changes in pricing to attract more audience, using novel technology that is seeing success, offering discounts at the concession stand, valet parking, and customizing reminders and emails about preferred genre of movies will definitely increase revenue through improved experiences.
While all these changes are informed by data and changes are localized, the theatres play a major role in the cinema ecosystem. However, the scope of these changes in the larger scheme of things is limited.
The box office
Compared to a single exhibitor or theatre seeing changes after leveraging data, the effect of theatres pooling their data will be massive. Insights gained from theatres and studios help in targeted, personalized marketing campaigns.
While the data by itself might not hold much allure, the insight that could be gleaned from it holds the secret to competitive advantage. It’s imperative to explore the potential of data in enabling informed decisions and staying relevant.
At Savantis, we work towards understanding your needs and enabling digital transformation. As an SAP Gold Partner, we address the unique business needs of cinemas through innovation and deep knowledge, aided by intelligent systems like S/4HANA. Feel free to get in touch with us for more information.
