• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, June 7, 2010

Talk about bucking a trend: virtually alone among major media, digital out-of-home video posted positive revenue growth in 2009, thanks in part to continuing growth in cinema advertising.

Total cinema ad revenues grew 2% from $571.5 million to $584 million -- a modest gain, but impressive compared to steep drops in print and broadcast last year. Better still, total cinema ad revenues are trending up by double-digit percentages in the first half of 2010, according to Michael Chico, president and CEO of the Cinema Advertising Council.

Separately, National CineMedia released preliminary results for 2009 and the first quarter of 2010.

NCM said total revenues increased 3% from $370 million in 2008 to $381 million in 2009; revenues then jumped 15.1% from $73.5 million in the first quarter of 2009 to $84.6 million in the first quarter of 2010.

In general, growth has been led by categories including auto, apparel, entertainment, retail, consumer packaged-goods, travel and wireless. Speaking for the industry overall, Chico -- executive vice president for sales and marketing at Screenvision, the other dominant cinema ad network -- emphasized the rebound in the auto category, which seems to bode well for the prospects of a broader economic recovery.

The cinema ad revenue report covers on-screen cinema advertising, such as commercials airing in advance of movie previews and the feature presentation, and off-screen revenues such as lobby-based digital video and audio programming, sampling, special events and concession-based promotions.

Over the last few years, cinema ad networks have succeeded in tapping into broadcast TV ad budgets, armed with studies showing increased rates of recall for cinema ad audiences.

In March 2009, NCM began buying Nielsen data to demonstrate the superiority of a mixed TV-cinema ad buy versus TV alone. In general, data has shown that there is a subset of moviegoers that are light TV watchers, therefore easier to reach via cinema advertising.

At the time, Doug Pulick, NCM's senior vice president of research, said the fusion of data from Nielsen's National People Meter, Nielsen's Cinema Audience Report and MRI allows NCM to demonstrate the greater net reach that media buyers can achieve by "reallocating TV dollars to cinema."