With all eyes on the Big Screen while sitting in a darkened room, at the cinema people are in a positive frame of mind, waiting to be entertained and open to hearing your message. Cinemagoers are a captive audience, giddy with heightened anticipation for their chosen film. Couple this with surround sound, the ultimate picture quality and the mother of all screens, and you have a uniquely engaging advertising opportunity.
Irish people love the cinema. Our per capita visits are the 2nd highest in the EU and 6th highest in the world. We have a regular cinema-going habit, encouraged by our love of story-telling and our enjoyment of shared experiences. Never was the importance of cinema to Irish society more apparent than during lockdown, when cinema was frequently listed as the pastime we missed the most. Sources 1 & 2.
Admissions have risen consistently in the last few years. Republic of Ireland cinemas amassed an impressive total of 11.8m admissions or visits in 2024 – up 3% on the previous year. To put that in context, annual cinema admissions in the Republic of Ireland are the equivalent of filling Croke Park 12 times every month. Admissions grew by a further 6% in the first half of this year.
No distractions - 76% of cinemagoers put their phone away when they sit down in the cinema – offering a unique single-screen engagement opportunity. Elsewhere people are able to skip the ads but at the cinema there is 100% visibility of an ad, 100% viewability and 100% completion rates. According to World Advertising Research Centre (WARC), Cinema has the lowest rate of advertising avoidance at 8% and 94% choose to watch the adverts before the film begins. And the Kantar Reactions 2024 survey found that Cinema is the 2nd most preferred media channel among consumers (with only Point of Sale ads cited as more popular).
In fact, audience attention to advertising is greater at the Cinema than for any other advertising medium. Recent studies show that Cinema is the No. 1 media for engagement. Cinemagoers see advertising on the big screen as being on average, 18% more personally relevant than other platforms. Sources 6 & 7.
It’s hardly surprising than that with cinemagoers consuming ads in such a unique way, that they are more likely to remember what they’ve seen. Cinema advertising is up to 15 times more impactful than the same ads shown on TV and more memorable than with any other media. With greater depth of communication and lasting memorability, cinemagoers are far more likely to empathise with the advertising message. Cinemagoers are 60% more likely than the average adult to be tempted to buy products they have seen advertised. Source 8
Cinemagoers tend to be light TV viewers, so cinema is the perfect support medium, delivering a unique, elusive audience of affluent, busy, active people. Cinema over-indexes on the valuable 15-34 audience and cinemagoers are 11% more likely to be ABC1s. Sources 9 & 10.
Cinema advertising offers complete flexibility, allowing advertisers to tune in to their target audience. Advertisers can select audiences for specific films, regions or audience type. Packages are designed to deliver key age groups, gender and audience type and we can facilitate restricted advertising such as HFSS etc. Local advertising also allow geo-targeting by cinema.
Reference Sources:  1 OMDIA 2023, 2 & 3 FAME, 4 WARC, 5 Kantar Media Reactions 2024, 6 Amplified Intelligence Attention PLAN, 7 P&D UK, 8 Audi Case Study ROI, 9 ROI TGI, 10 ROI Film Monitor/Differentology
