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National CineMedia Upfront 2016: Millennials, Content And Data

Since we were in London when National CineMedia (NCM) [1] presented its fifth annual upfront event at the AMC Lincoln Square movie theater in New York, we couldn’t attend.

NCM-Logo-Corporate [2]However, we learned that it was all about Millennials, content, and data, and there were a couple of things during the presentation that stood out after NCM’s new CEO, Andy England, said, that all of the hard-to-reach young people are at the movies.

“358 million tickets were sold to Millennials at our theaters last year,” he said. “We have more Millennials visiting our theaters in one year than there are people in the United States, 36 million more. So, why do Millennials love the movies? Because this is the best content there is.”

NCM’s newly appointed president, Cliff Marks, then took the stage to talk about Millennial moviegoers, noting, “NCM is the #1 weekend network for all demos, reaching over 700 million moviegoers every year. But the really big news is that our Millennial movie-going audience grew over 16% in 2015 and is already up 8% so far this year! We are now a premier Millennial network.”

One thing that stood out for us was new research from a joint study with Omnicom Media Group’s Annalect [3] and CivicScience [4] about Millennials’ movie-going habits, which offers some great insights for advertisers, studios and theater owners. Millennials make up the largest frequent movie-going age group, and this generation is highly invested in the overall movie-going process:

Marks said, “Millennials don’t just want content pushed out to them; they like to personally interact with it as well. We’ve listened to the demand for brand interactivity, and NCM is proud to be working with Audience Entertainment and TimePlay to bring both gesture-based and mobile phone-based interactivity to cinema. We’ll be launching on approximately 500 screens and growing to over 1000 in the near future so consumers can interact with your brands live on the big screen.”

Another point that stood out for us: “NCM is the connector between brands and movie audiences,” said Bennett Fogel, NCM chief revenue officer. “As part of our transformation into a state-of-the-art premium video platform, we have developed a completely new inventory management system and are launching the first ever Data Management Platform for a cinema network with the Nielsen Marketing Cloud.”

Fogel then introduced the new ways that NCM is bringing cinema advertising into today’s world of enhanced targeting and big data:

Fogel said, “Aside from all of the predictive data that we can provide on the front end, quantifying business lift is the key ROI metric that we are all being held accountable for today. Our physical locations give us the unique ability to track audiences from our theaters to your businesses. By working with geo-location based research companies, we have partnered with clients to conduct dozens of studies in the retail, QSR, and CPG categories. The results have been consistent, and almost startling, in terms of incremental traffic and sales lift!”

“Huge Millennial reach and the best video content aren’t enough,”
said England. “Giving you the important data to help your brand reach and target the audience you need; while finding new ways for you to connect with the audience before, during and after the movies — that will be the next generation of cinema advertising.”