Several movies made the roughly $3 million investment to advertise at the Super Bowl this year and now with a full month gone since the Steelers became world champions, it’s a good time to see just what they got for their money.

The ten movie ads that aired during the Super Bowl (including the G.I. Joe spot just before the game) saw highly varied subsequent interest at their official movie sites.

(Year One’s Crackle.com page was used because viewers were directed there at the end of the spot)

Predictably, high-action blockbusters dominated traffic, but official channels aren’t the only place that people are checking for information about upcoming movies. With over 20 million unique visitors per month, IMDb.com is a popular destination for anything you need to know about movies.

Highlights

• The effect of March release dates and further marketing efforts on the more recent weeks should be noted for some of these titles, such as Race to Witch Mountain and Monsters vs. Aliens.
• While the action blockbusters well outpaced others on their official sites, the lead wasn’t so dominating on IMDb, where lesser-known movies like Year One managed to carve out decent interest.
• For the week of the game, Up’s ranking varied the most, coming in the fourth highest among official channels and falling all the way to last on IMDb. Fast & Furious saw opposite results, with the official site in the bottom half of the rankings, but climbing all the way up at third on IMDb, moving past Star Trek.
• Combining Disney’s two offerings (Race to Witch Mountain and Up) still only moved their ranking up to fourth (official sites) and fifth (IMDb) for the week of the game – that’s $6 million to barely finish in the top half.
• However you look at it, both Transformers and G.I. Joe created significant interest that has been sustained beyond the week of the game, despite release dates in June and August.

This just goes to show that just as interest in movies varies, so does the destination for getting information about them. Movie marketers need to be aware that their message about the film isn’t the only one fans are seeing and increasingly account for third-party channels in their promotional efforts.

Like many moviegoers, I’m eagerly awaiting the film version of the classic Alan Moore Watchmen comics, opening Friday. Although I’ve been getting most of my information about the movie through friends, and most recently an article in Wired, I wondered where people are going online to learn more about this highly-anticipated fill.

I analyzed where people who used terms including the keyword ‘watchmen’ on major search engines were directed over the last 10 weeks. The chart below shows the top 10 sites that these people were referred to by keyword share and the percentage of all traffic generated by searches including the keyword ‘watchmen’ that went to a particular site.

Even though the studio site was the #1 destination for these searchers, and official movie sites figured prominently into the top 10, much of the search traffic for this film was referred to social media sites.

• The official studio site was the #1 destination for searchers in this period: about 18.5% of people who searched for “watchmen” keyword were directed there. In fact, ‘watchmen’ was the 4th most popular keyword for warnerbros.com in general, generating almost 3% of the domain’s total search referrals over this same period.
• Wikipedia, at 18.4% of keyword referrals, was a close second in terms of most referrals, ranking above dedicated movie site IMDb.
• Social media sites took up three of the top 10 spots:
  • YouTube ranked fourth. Although the Watchmen-related videos were posted by individuals, one member did say the studio had given him permission to use official copies.
  • Blogspot was #9 by keyword referral, and MySpace rounded out the top 10.

In the next few weeks it’s likely that the flow of traffic to Watchmen-related destinations will change as people considering going to see the movie search for reviews. Visits to other review and social media sites – like Rotten Tomatoes (#11), Facebook (#12) and Twitter (#21) – will likely increase. Still, the fact that so much of this initial search traffic is going to social media sites before the release date suggests that the channel is an important information source for audiences even weeks before they buy a ticket.

So movie marketers take note: social media matters even before the movie is released. And, it’s making Watchmen look pretty cool.

See you at the movies.

I was in L.A. last October walking with some friends near Hollywood Boulevard and a billboard actually caught my attention (I am usually engaged by GPS or friends). The billboard had the picture of a man smiling covered in blood splatter with the caption, “America’s Favorite Serial Killer.” I turned to my friend and asked, “Who is Dexter?” From that point on, I have not missed an episode of the award-winning series “Dexter” and I am excited Showtime has decided to pick up two additional seasons.

For those who don’t know the series, Dexter Morgan is a blood spatter analyst for the Miami Police Department who stalks and kills murderers that have fallen through the cracks of the justice system. Showtime (affiliated with CBS) has hit a home run with this series and season three had the largest premiere audience in Showtime’s history, with 1.2 million viewers.

What is most interesting about Showtime is their use of online search marketing, continued investment in search words from Google and Yahoo! and application of online media to their overall marketing. They have had success and controversy with viral videos, especially the “hit list“campaign where you scare a friend into thinking they are next on a serial killer’s list with a phony news broadcast.

The success of “Dexter” is multifaceted and can be broken down into three categories:

• Creating Interest - The series has compelling characters, an award-winning storyline and acting that is coupled with creative marketing and a strong multi-media / marketing mix
• Sustaining Interest - DVD launches before premieres may contribute to increases in website activity during premieres and re-invest viewers in the series
• Broadening Accessibility - Airing the first season on CBS in February of 2008 increased exposure significantly with a 136% increase in web traffic from season 2 to season 3 premieres

The upward trend of website exposure indicates that the move to fill the gap in the writers’ strike slump with the CBS airing and current marketing efforts were solid moves. Since inception, “Dexter” has won 17 awards (including 2 Emmys and 6 IGN’s) and had 22 nominations (including 6 Emmys and 4 Golden Globes) and, with season three ending in December, I believe 2009 will be another year of accolades for the cast and crew. Showtime gaining exposure on CBS and multi-tiered marketing efforts have prepared “Dexter” for success, I only hope the series maintains its integrity and quality. Season 4 is anticipated to start filming in the spring of 2009 and continue to air in its current time slot on Showtime. The airing of season two on CBS has not been scheduled at this time and I am interested to see how much will be edited out to show on network television - it’s pretty intense.

Side Opinion: The greatest television travesty in my generation was the poor marketing management of Arrested Development by Fox. If Fox had utilized a similar marketing strategy as Showtime, Arrested Development (with its multiple awards) would have had the same commercial success.

While Smartphone owners may use email, calendar and contacts most often, the people I know can’t live without at least one other feature of the mobile web. Some love their GPS, others like a constant feed of sports scores, others want to be able to see their Facebook friends’ status updates at all times. My personal favorite convenience is being able to look up movies and showtimes when I’m away from my computer.

Now that I have a Smartphone, I tend use both it and my PC to make movie plans. So I wondered if other Smartphone owners are doing the same thing, and if iPhone owners were behaving any differently. Is mobile information changing how we’re using the internet on our computers to plan a night at the movies?

To answer these questions, I took a look at some of the survey and clickstream data from Compete’s recent Smartphone Intelligence study.

As we can see from the chart, not all device owners behave the same way. About 2.5 times more iPhone owners said they looked up movies and showtimes on their phone at least three times in a month.

But what about online behavior? On average, iPhone and other Smartphone owners both look up movies and showtimes on their computer about 3.8 times a month. iPhone users, however, spend about 20% less time doing this on their computers.

So, iPhone users are looking up movies and showtimes more often on their phones. They’re performing the same task on their computers just as frequently as Smartphone owners, but not spending as much time on it. Why could this be?

The behavior of the iPhone users may be rooted in demographics and functionality. The demographic part of the explanation is that iPhone owners who responded to our survey were slightly younger than the other Smartphone owners. Thirty percent of iPhone respondents were under 34, compared to 22% of Smartphone respondents. Most theatrical audiences also tend to skew younger.

The other factor influencing behavior of these groups on the mobile and fixed internet may be the availability of applications and the relative ease of the mobile web browsing experience. The new Smartphone I recently bought has a lot of great features, but movie and showtime application choices are limited. A quick check of the iTunes Application Store yielded five choices, four of them free. Making the mobile web easier to navigate has been a key feature of the new Smartphones – like the G1, the Storm and the Bold – but many devices are behind the iPhone in this regard.

So what does all of this mean? Clearly, looking up movies and showtimes on the personal computer isn’t disappearing anytime soon, but it is possible that the availability of better mobile options will lead people to use that channel more often, creating new possibilities in location-based and mobile advertising.

See you at the movies.

Dunkin’ Donuts took the gloves off in its battle against rival Starbucks with the October 21 launch of its “Dunkin Beat Starbucks” campaign featuring a national blind taste test where Dunkin’ coffee was preferred over Starbucks. Has the campaign resonated with coffee drinkers?

*Daily reach is the number of people that visit a website on a given day
as a percentage of all U.S. Internet users online that day.

• 45,516 people visited the dedicated microsite dunkinbeatstarbucks.com the week ending October 25
• Weekly traffic to dunkindonuts.com jumped 61% to more than 196,000 the week after the initial media launch
• The daily reach of dunkindonuts.com saw a temporary increase on October 26 & 27

So, will the battles for coffee drinkers continue? Starbucks has already launched a new media campaign with a TV ad during Saturday Night Live offering free coffee to voters on Election Day. Daily reach to Starbucks.com the day before the Election skyrocketed. Coincidence? Not likely.

Below is some advice from one coffee drinker.

Taste matters. So does staying top of mind with coffee enthusiasts. Creative marketing campaigns that break through the media clutter and reach coffee enthusiasts regardless of their brand preference may help to grow the overall market, even if only temporarily. Consumers who visited both Dunkin Donuts’ and Starbucks’ sites last week jumped to more than 485,000, its highest level since mid-September.

Stay true to your brand promise. Make sure your brand strikes a chord with the coffee drinkers that are core to the brand’s identity. Go beyond demographic-inspired or comparison pricing messages to see how the behavior of your coffee drinkers differs from your rival’s. Find out what we’re searching for, our attitudes, and where we spend time online versus (hint – I have been known to spend time on hsus.org versus either Dunkin’ Donuts or Starbucks despite my love for and daily cup of, coffee!). How would you reach and engage me?

The online channel, originally considered a threat to the music and movie industries, has become an increasingly important distribution channel. Over the last several years, we’ve seen more and more industry-sanctioned content download sites. Services like eMusic, Napster (the legal version), Rhapsody, and iTunes have grown their inventories and membership. At the same time, companies that used to peddle hard copies of their respective media are turning to the online retailers.

I’m a big fan of the hit AMC TV show “Mad Men,” but I’m not a cable subscriber, so I usually turn to the internet to stay up to speed. Sure, I could pay $2.99 to download last week’s episode from iTunes. Or I could use one of the many P2P sites and download the same content for free. I know there are many who would prefer the free route, but I think that it’s much easier to download from iTunes than it is to search high and low across the internet for P2P content. When do users use P2P and when do they use industry sanctioned sites?

To learn more about how consumers use paid content together with free content, I divided online media sites into two categories: industry-sanctioned and P2P. For the industry-sanctioned category I looked at paid services like Rhapsody, eMusic, Napster, Amazon, plus free streaming sites like Pandora, last.fm, and Shoutcast. In the P2P category I looked at 13 Torrent sites (free content delivery) and Limewire.

The chart below shows how traffic to P2P sites compares to traffic to industry sanctioned sites.

• Traffic to industry sanctioned sites climbed 60% since August 2007, while traffic to P2P sites has been holding steady over the same period
• Still, P2P sites’ get more visitors, with an average volume was roughly 8.5 million unique visitors per month, compared to only 6.3 million on industry sanctioned sites

Why the growing interest in industry sanctioned sites? It might be the convenience factor. Content can be tough to find or of sub-par quality when downloaded with P2P. For only $0.99, you could hop on iTunes and download a tough to find song instantly, rather than sifting through junk and spam on a P2P site.

If convenience is driving media sales on industry sanctioned sites, these sites could continue to grow and succeed. P2P sites are likely not going anywhere though, and even as the music and movie industries find success with new distribution models, they will need to find creative ways to coexist with free content.