Sure you can break through a bridge, but can you rush the passer?
There’s been a lot of talk about the gloomy climate for advertisers, with plenty of stories about anxious corporations pulling back from their usual “big commercials during big events” strategy. Dreamworks, though, is apparently not afraid of making the big splash–Variety reports that the studio is putting out gigantic money for a 90 second 3D ad during this year’s Super Bowl for their film “Monsters vs. Aliens.”
Ad time is supposedly going at $3 million for 30 seconds; there will be additional costs from the supposed 150 million 3D glasses Dreamworks plans to give away. In other words, this is a big outlay of money for Dreamworks. But the Super Bowl is on February 1st and the ”Aliens” will open in March, so this is a fantastic opportunity to put the film in front of millions of viewers; you might be able to accumulate lots of viewers of an ad by running it constantly during TV’s prime time, but in there are few shows that can guarantee a large audience these days, and many people are recording and watching shows while fast-forwarding through ads. The Super Bowl, as well as the Oscars, is one of the few reliable pieces of general audience entertainment left. They can really count on having a lot of people sitting together watching TV, so this is a rare chance to make a big impression.
No word on when exactly the ad will run, but the 1st half is a good (albeit overly general) guess. Keep an eye out for a sure blitz of ads telling you how to get your free 3D viewing glasses.
