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Q: What percentage of the cost of a movie is normaly used for publicity? ( Answered 5 out of 5 stars,   3 Comments )
Question  
Subject: What percentage of the cost of a movie is normaly used for publicity?
Category: Arts and Entertainment > Movies and Film
Asked by: 00o00-ga
List Price: $10.00
Posted: 01 Apr 2006 17:16 PST
Expires: 01 May 2006 18:16 PDT
Question ID: 714452
I will like to know what percent of the cost of a movie is used for
it's publicity, and what are those expences? Cable ads, internet
baners, magazines..?

Thanks!!
Answer  
Subject: Re: What percentage of the cost of a movie is normaly used for publicity?
Answered By: easterangel-ga on 03 Apr 2006 01:13 PDT
Rated:5 out of 5 stars
 
Hi! Thanks for the question.

Here are the average movie average costs and percentages that you need.

2005:
Overall Cost: $96.2 million
Marketing Cost: $36.2 million
Percentage of Marketing to Overall Cost: 37.6%

2004:
Overall Cost (Estimates): $97.17 million 
Marketing Cost: $34.4 million 
Percentage of Marketing to Overall Cost: 35.4%

?But 2005's marketing costs rose 5.2 percent to $36.2 million, up from
$34.4 million a year earlier. The combined cost to make and market a
movie was $96.2 million, down less than 1 percent from 2004.?

?Hollywood ticket sales take a hit?
http://money.cnn.com/2006/03/10/news/companies/movies.reut/index.htm 


The cost components meanwhile can be taken from these 2004 figures
from an article at Hollywood Reporter.

These are over-all figures and not average numbers.

Overall Cost Estimate: $3,338.6 million

National TV - $1,197.8 million (35.9% marketing cost)
Regional TV - $482.5 million (14.5%)
Cable TV - $688.9 million (20.6%)
Syndication ? $133.5 million (4%)
Spanish TV - $1.4 million (0.04%)
Magazines - $24.7 million (0.7%)
Radio - $50 million (1.5%)
Outdoor Ads - $32.2 million (1%)
Internet - $69.2 million (2.1%)
Newspapers - $596.6 million (17.9%)
Unaccounted by Source - (1.76%) (Based on percentage cost and not on
overall cost figures)

?Money matters?
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/film/feature_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000913823


Search terms used:  
the average cost to market a film domestically in 2004
movie marketing expenses  

I hope these links would help you in your research. Before rating this
answer, please ask for a clarification if you have a question or if
you would need further information.
                                                          
                              
Regards,                              
Easterangel-ga                              
Google Answers Researcher
00o00-ga rated this answer:5 out of 5 stars
Great!!
Just what I was looking for, if you find more data and feel like
adding it, please do so. 5 Stars!!
Thanks!!

Comments  
Subject: Re: What percentage of the cost of a movie is normaly used for publicity?
From: tr1234-ga on 02 Apr 2006 09:47 PDT
 
Perhaps of tangential interest is the Smoking Gun article "Hollywood
By The Numbers) at http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0227061hollywood1.html

Note that the movie budget analysis in this article does NOT include
marketing costs. All the article says on the subject is "The records
provide a line-by-line account of spending on each movie up to its
completion, but do not reveal what the studio paid after that point
for marketing and advertising (that secondary sum usually adds tens of
millions to a movie's total cost)."

All this might imply that (1) when a specific movie's budget is talked
about (like "The blockbuster with a $200 million budget will be
released this summer") that budget figure probably does *not* include
marketing costs; and (2) getting a figure for movie marketing costs
might be even more difficult than getting budget numbers--and that
ain't easy...
Subject: Re: What percentage of the cost of a movie is normaly used for publicity?
From: geof-ga on 02 Apr 2006 14:51 PDT
 
Looking at this matter strictly objectively and rationally, the costs
of MAKING a movie do NOT include the costs of marketing and
distributing it. After all, if the makers never intended to show it at
all, it would still cost the same amount to actually make it as if
they intended to give it world-wide distribution. That said, I don't
see that the costs of marketing etc need ever represent a fixed
proportion of the actual costs of making a film. Suppose you made
movie on a shoe-string budget (say less than $50K like Blair Witch
Project) and you thought it might make over $200M (like Blair Witch
Project) wouldn't yuou think it worth investing $1M - 2000% of its
production costs - to advertise it?
Subject: Re: What percentage of the cost of a movie is normaly used for publicity?
From: 00o00-ga on 02 Apr 2006 23:31 PDT
 
"Looking at this matter strictly objectively and rationally, the costs
of MAKING a movie do NOT include the costs of marketing and
distributing it."

Its funny, I could rephrase my question 100 ways and will always get a
comment like this one.
Would you like something like this:

Based on the cost of a movie multiplied by X actor fame at the time of release
how much will the film industry dicede to spend on publicty on any given movie.
Average your answer on high and low season.   :)

When you get to a point of industrialisation of any kind of PRODUCT
you have GUIDELINES on to everything you do, movies are products. And
the Film industry is very predictible they don't just go -Man, this
movie Rocks and let's throw 20million into publicty!! wohoo!!-
Blair Witch is a case study, it's absured to bring it out. There are
only a handfull of movies that have acomplished this, I bet you can't
name more than five. Here's a list:
http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/records/budgets.html

I'm not looking for cold numbers.
Thanks!!
:)

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