Having experienced rapid organic growth in its local market, Perth-based cinema advertising firm CineAds is poised for national expansion.
Having experienced rapid organic growth in its local market, Perth-based cinema advertising firm CineAds is poised for national expansion.
Covering 98 per cent of the state’s megaplex and arthouse cinema screens from Broome to Albany, the company is now looking east and is in advanced discussions with two of the country’s biggest cinema chains to expand into their national circuit.
With an announcement expected within the month, managing director Wes Stansfield said the success of CineAds’ business model in Western Australia sparked the interest of the cinema chains, with which they had built strong relationships servicing their WA cinema complexes.
Mr Stansfield joined the company in August 2004, a year after its inception, following 10 years with cinema advertising giants Pearl and Dean and Val Morgan.
Val Morgan, the sector’s dominant player, revised its business strategy and shut down its local offices, including its Perth office in 2004.
CineAds then stepped in to fill the vacuum, offering affordable cinema advertising packages to local businesses using the then new digital technology.
“When Val Morgan took away the local part of their business, they took away the opportunity for local businesses to use a great advertising medium,” Mr Stansfield said.
“And that’s part of the reason why we’ve been so successful. We’ve been able to target the right businesses to put advertising onto those [cinema] screens and target those hard-to-reach markets.”
Using the new digital projection technology, Mr Stansfield says CineAds has reinvented the cinema advertising medium.
Replacing the old 34mm reel, digital technology allowed businesses to create high quality, moving picture advertisements at a fraction of the price.
Cinema chain Hoyts first deployed the digital projection technology in late 2005, and was followed by Greater Union in 2006.
Mr Stansfield believes that cinema advertising has advantages in reaching key target markets, and specific geographic markets, in a highly captive environment.
These target markets include the hard-to-reach 15 to 25-year-old age bracket, as well as baby boomers and empty nesters who are cashed up and time rich.
“Cinema has always been a premium market. It’s a filter – it attracts the best consumers you can target,” Mr Stansfield said.
“The power of a 60-foot screen, that impact alone is like having a billboard with full audio in a captive environment.”
The recent addition of exhibition group Luna Palace Cinemas, which will offer local businesses the opportunity to advertise on Luna cinema screens for the first time in eight years, has taken the number of screens serviced by CineAds advertising state-wide to 150.
And with national expansion on the cards, CineAds is expected to add another state to its growing stable within the month.
With a staff of 20 in the Perth head office, including sales staff and an in-house production team, Mr Stansfield said the national roll-out would require careful management to enable replication of the WA model in each state.
