MUMBAI: Not only do India's cinema audiences tend to be young and affluent – an attractive demographic for brands – they are also more likely to pay attention to ads in this medium than on television, a new study says.

At a Theatre Near You
, a report from Interactive TV, the GroupM-owned agency specialising in cinema advertising, was based on a study across the top eight metros which found that more than half (57%) of this population were at least occasional cinema-goers who watched movies in theatre once in six months or more.

Further, seven in ten (71%) of these cinema-goers were aged 15-24, while six in ten (61%) were in the country's most affluent socio-economic group, NCCS A.

More than half of these young, affluent viewers indicated that they paid more attention to theatre ads and found them more interesting than TV ads.

But it's no longer a case of one channel competing with another, pointed out Siddharth Banerjee, EVP/marketing at Vodafone India. "It's about relevant storytelling across diverse channels," he told the Economic Times.

"Depending upon the objective, we now have a plethora of channels to tell a story with more relevance and contextuality than ever before," he said, adding that in cinema, advertisers are now able to deliver a targeted marketing campaign, based on geography, specific weeks and particular movies that suit their target audience and marketing calendar.

Younger cinema-goers also tend to be heavy internet users, he noted, "therefore, combining cinema with digital can help to target this younger demographic in very interesting ways".

A recent report by PricewaterhouseCoopers said that, with a CAGR of 10.4% between 2017 and 2021, India was set to become the third largest cinema market in the world.

The spread of multiplexes, digitisation of single screens and the growing popularity of Hollywood and regional movies are all factors that are expected to help cinema advertising grow faster, at 15%, than the overall advertising market.

Data sourced from Economic Times, Afaqs!; additional content by WARC staff