cini me

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cini me looks to solve the challenge of validating reach in cinema advertising. Cinema advertising is one of the most targeted ways of reaching younger people and I have used it as a vehicle to target parents through buying adverts in mothers-and-baby screenings.  The problem is that it’s hard to know the actual reach and impact of cinema advertising until now.

cini me – is a smartphone application that allows consumers to answer questions posed by a programme embedded in adverts prior to the film trailers. cini.me is interesting because it can track ongoing engagement across campaigns over time on an ongoing basis, and is likely to be only downloaded by the most motivated and regular cinema-goers.

The quiz when I was saw it was sponsored by Sony PlayStation meaning that the application competition was probably self-liquidating at the very least. From Sony’s point-of-view participation numbers give a proxy measure of reach and attention at the time the segment was running. You can see more on that campaign here.

Finally it helps the cinemas, providing evidence that with the right campaign, cinema can drive a mobile call-to-action. From there is is up the advertising agency and media buying agency to demonstrate return on investment on behalf of their clients.

There is a fly in the ointment for all this, no wifi in the cinema and next to no mobile reception either. The combination of both affects the volume and quality of the data received by the advertiser in a manner that can’t be readily modelled for.

I am surprised that clients, haven’t integrated mobile search into cinema campaigns before in that way that I have seen done previously on out of home advertising in the UK or on television advertising in both Japan and Korea for years. If mobile network infrastructure improves that could be a missed opportunity for advertisers.