It used to be that the Hollywood studios counted on theatrical trailers viewed mostly in movie theaters to get out the buzz on upcoming releases. The studios saved their big push in traditional media for the time around a film's release to get, as they put it, butts in seats. It's only been in the last decade that movies have found a strong presence online. And with box office numbers continuing to sag, studios are increasingly relying on interactive marketing to build interest and awareness months ahead of a film's release.

Hollywood has been a good client to traditional media for many years, promoting films with tantalizing TV teasers, full-page newspaper ads, radio spots, and outdoor billboards and wallscapes in larger markets. The studios discovered early on that online media made a near-perfect marriage of message and audience.

"Where are the consumers?" asks Gordon Paddison, executive vice president of integrated marketing at New Line Cinema in Los Angeles. "As media and consumer interaction fragments, people are less on MTV or watching 'Friends' [in syndication] and more on the Internet. That means we have to shift to follow those consumer eyeballs."

The key to film marketing, Paddison says, is combining awareness, exploration, and conversion, something interactive media does very well. "Outdoor [advertising] and newspapers are mostly awareness," he adds. "TV you can get more in-depth with awareness plus some exploration. But on a Web site, you can convert to where people are buying tickets or finding show times as well."

Ninety percent of consumers under 25, Paddison says, find show times online, a figure he calls "astounding."

With each film that New Line has in production, Paddison's department is hard at work building an online presence for it. The launch date for the site, he says, generally coincides with the film's first trailer appearance in theaters. Like the films themselves, Web sites can be hit-or-miss with consumers, and it's not always clear why that is the case.

New Line's romantic drama "The Notebook," for example, broke the mold somewhat when visits to the site increased after the film's release. But generally, they taper off, peaking again when the DVD is released. "With 'The Notebook,' people were looking for more of an emotional connection to what they felt in the theater," Paddison recalls. "The key elements are photo and video, and it rekindles the romantic experience they had."

Franchise films like New Line's "Lord of the Rings" trilogy can generate a great deal of interest long before the film's release. But even popcorn flicks that are part of a successful franchise will attract a lot of traffic. Paddison points to titles like "Blade," "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," and "Austin Powers" as films that have generated strong interest online.

"There's such a core community involved with them that the property ends up driving the traffic," he says. "It's very interesting. And some sites, you can't get anyone to go to."

The New World

It's not an exaggeration to suggest that the people who work on film Web sites have some of the most interesting and challenging jobs in online media. New, extraordinarily dynamic sites are created on a regular basis, and the bar continues to be raised in terms of quality, inventiveness, and interactivity.

"The New World," which debuted on the East and West coasts Christmas Day and goes into wide release January 13, is a historical drama based on the John Smith/Pocahontas story and directed by Terrence Malick.

"The producer and the director both felt strongly about people discovering the film in the theater," says Aaron Sugarman, New Line's vice president of interactive marketing. Sugarman was alluding to one of the trickiest parts of development: creating a Web site that explores the film without giving the story away. With "The New World," they decided to try podcasting. Sugarman had audio features produced exploring some behind-the-scenes action, then edited and put them on the site as downloadable podcasts. "Podcasting is a lovely way to provide backstory and detail without giving too much away," he says. "Visual is so obvious; audio plays more to the imagination, like a series of NPR [National Public Radio] pieces."

Like the film evoked in the trailer, the site for "The New World" is dark and foreboding, but it also teems with creative life. With the podcasts, a blog, slideshows, and other features presented via an elegant interface, thenewworldmovie.com site appears to be doing a good job of getting people interested in the film.

But quantifying just how well a site does for a film isn't a simple matter. Paddison says that determining how many people are converted into ticket-buyers by looking at a Web site is an inexact science at best. But there is some correlation between the box office and the number of people who check show times on the site. Online ticket sales are relatively insignificant, he says.

"We have a strong feeling that when we have 35 to 40 percent of people looking [for show times] online, we've done well," Paddison says, adding, "We've done coupons, wireless, anything...we try them all."

Directing Traffic

To get moviegoers to its sites, New Line relies on a variety of media. Movie theater trailers always feature the URL prominently, as do print and TV ads. A lot of visitors come from fan sites like imdb.com or rottentomatoes.com.

But there are other ways to build buzz. For the November 2005 release of the comedy "Just Friends," New Line built a site that resembled a social networking site. Riffing off the high school prom and yearbook theme, it was heavily tied to popular teen sites like myspace.com and xanga.com.

"The target for this film was girls/young women 15 to 25, so that was the obvious jumping-off point," Paddison says, adding that one contest featured on the site attracted over 21 million unique visitors. "We do research on the top sites, then cross-index for frequency of filmgoing." New Line targets the sites that reach the demographic of the particular film, then indexes for how often the audience attends the theater and watches the film, in this case "Just Friends."

Viral marketing is also a big part of New Line's strategy. Stamping the address of a film's Web site on all collateral material and working with bloggers and other tastemakers is just the beginning. The ultimate payoff comes when people e-mail the URL to friends because a site's content is fun and engaging.

The Right Fit

"The New World" and "Just Friends" are examples of the different approaches studios take on film promotion sites. Fun versus somber, quiet versus loud: The content and theme of the film set the tone for the site, Sugarman says. So does the audience. "It really starts with the demographic targeting," he says. "The scale and approach for the site is going to be determined by the audience for the film."

Art, documentary, or 35-plus female-targeted films are going to have quieter sites, according to Sugarman. Adult women, in particular, enjoy simpler sites without too many bells and whistles. "But if you're talking about a horror film aimed at the 17- to 34-year-old male, you're in that prime spot with a built-in fan base, so you go a little more all-out," he says.

Regardless of the approach, the focus is always on sending people to see the film. Putting "Just Friends"-style baubles on a serious drama like "The Notebook" would be an obvious no-no. But striking the right tone for films between those extremes can be a challenge.

"I do believe that a great Web site may not necessarily be able to get someone to see the film, but a bad one could talk them out of it," Paddison says. "It's up to us as marketers to come up with good stuff."