Already at the forefront of online marketing, Hollywood studios continue to be trailblazers in the realm of rich media for traditional banner ads and takeover pages. "The entertainment vertical is
definitely leading the way," says Brian Hjelm, vice president of product and marketing for Unicast, a company that executes creative for a wide variety of big-traffic-driving digital platforms. "From
our perspective, the entertainment industry is leading the innovation of rich media and video."
Unicast's recent projects include 3-D animated flash modules that were embedded into ads for
DreamWorks animation's spring 3-D blockbuster
How to Train Your Dragon. In fact, with 3-D proliferate at theaters this summer, such executions are becoming widely popular, Hjelm notes.
The studios are also integrating an increasing number of interactive elements into their online creative these days, he says. For example, a Unicast-created ad for Lionsgate's
Kick-Ass that ran recently on IGN included a "create your own superhero" widget that - if clicked through in its entirety - will connect the user to the movie via Facebook.
Not
only are the studios driving innovation for Unicast right now, Hjelm notes, they're also leading the way to a significant overall buoyancy in Internet display advertising.
According to
eMarketer, even though overall U.S. ad revenue was down 4.5 percent in the first quarter of this year, the Yahoo! display ad business was up 11.7 percent.
Says one Disney online marketing
official, using video to advertise products that are essentially, well, video makes sense. And given that the movie business more often than not targets a demo under the age of 30, the online sector
makes increasing sense. "It's where our audience is right now," the Disney marketer notes. Daniel Frankel
couldn't agree more.