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Caught in a web: Spidey eclipses market with cinema back in full swing and ad spend up 153%

The 2021/22 school holidays admissions in Australia exploded to 10.7 million, while cinema ad spend sees growth up 153% from the prior year.

Driven by a slate of films such as Spiderman: No Way Home, Sing 2, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, House of Gucci, and The Matrix Resurrections all releasing across 16 December 2021 to 30 January 2022, cinema audiences eclipsed the comparable 2020/21 school holiday period by 60%, according to the CineTAM 2021/22. Standard Media Index Dec 2021 survey.

Spiderman: No Way Home transformed box office and audience records, taking out not only the top result of the summer and the entire year, but the film has become the third biggest film in Australian box office history. Crowds of almost half a million flocked to cinemas across its opening day, with a total of 4.1 million admissions for the film across the entire school holiday period.

Sing 2 became the second-biggest film of the summer school holidays pulling in 1.3 million Aussies to the big screen, while the highly nostalgic Ghostbusters: Afterlife captured 665,000 admissions.

Summer audiences skewed towards young, affluent 18 to 39 year-olds, while 45% of total admissions came from this hard-to-reach segment, with summer 18-39 attendances doubling year on year. Alongside these audiences were other high-value categories such as ABS families which presented a valuable opportunity to advertisers at such a crucial time of the year. (A family defined by ABS is two or more persons, one of whom is at least 15 years of age, who are related by blood, marriage (registered or de facto), adoption, step or fostering, and who are usually resident in the same household.)

Further proving the value advertisers place in cinema, the latest SMI result released yesterday reported December cinema spend up 153% on prior year, with all major categories including automotive, retail, and financial services returning to the big screen.

Val Morgan Cinema managing director, Guy Burbidge, said: “The performance of cinema over the Christmas and New Year school holiday period has been nothing short of outstanding, led by a record-breaking audience delivery from Spiderman: No Way Home. This summer proved that both the consumer and advertiser confidence in cinema is strong, delivering impressive audience results across the board and our largest revenue month since December 2019. The time is now for brands to start capitalising on the impressive slate of content coming out this year.”

“We’re confident that 2022 will be an outstanding period for cinema, as the combination of the world’s greatest content combined with the unparalleled experience that cinema offers, draws cinemagoers and brands back to Australia’s number one cultural activity,” said Burbidge.

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