Site targeting allowed Paramount Pictures to focus promotional efforts for three films via AdWords to specific niche sites that display AdSense and reach a likely audience for those movies.
Movies that wow audiences at film festivals still need to find audiences to fill theaters, not to mention to buy the DVD, the official soundtrack, and the licensed T-shirt. Unless the movie features Tom Cruise or Will Smith standing in the middle of things exploding, the film needs all the promotional help it can get.
In the most recent Inside AdSense post, Google noted how major Hollywood studio Paramount Pictures managed to build some awareness for a trio of films by using site targeting to find an audience:
“With Hustle & Flow, Paramount had the ideal test case for this kind of advertising,” (BusinessWeek’s David) Kiley explained. “The film is about an aspiring rap singer, specifically a performer of ‘crunk,’ ‘a Dixie-originated hip-hop genre marked by lurching beats and bellowed choruses. Hustle & Flow was a blowout hit at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, but Paramount couldn’t count on that industry buzz making it to the grass roots of crunk enthusiasts the movie studio wanted to reach.”
By plugging terms like ‘crunk’, ‘Memphis’, and the names of some of the movie’s stars into Google’s Site Tool (a tool that automatically returns a list of sites related specific topics or categories), Paramount was able to identify and advertise on 170 different niche sites.
With this example, Google demonstrated the need for sites to do research and know their markets. A small site with a strong focus on a specific niche can be a wellspring of customers just waiting to be reached.
David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
