• by Wayne Friedman , July 5, 2023

Halfway through the year and through the key July 4 moviegoing period, domestic yearly box-office revenue is improving -- but is still 22% behind 2019 year-to-date results, according to IMDb Box Office Mojo.

The season-to-date total of $4.51 billion is 16% higher than the total of $3.9 billion earned a year ago -- but down from the pre-pandemic 2019 period, which pulled in $5.8 billion.

Movie studios have been spending much more on national TV versus the same time period a year ago -- 25% higher at $666.81 million ($587.5 million in 2022), according to EDO Ad EnGage. Spending was $1.1 billion season-to-date in 2019.

This year there have been 154,540 airings and 83.4 billion impressions. A year ago, during the same time period, there were 107,480 airings with 60.9 billion impressions.

Movie studios have also been getting better “engagement” results.

Total engagement volume (EV) -- which EDO Ad EnGage measures as the increase in online engagement activity -- is up 15% vs. the same period a year ago.

This engagement rate, according to EDO (a 258,140 engagement rate for movies for the six-month period), measures the per-person, per-second engagement adjusted for a TV ad’s duration and impressions. EDO says it is indexed to a user-set benchmark.

Total EV represents how many times a user engaged with one specific ad.

The best movie of the year so far in terms of box-office revenue is Universal Pictures' “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” at $573.5 million, according to IMDb Box Office Mojo.