National CineMedia, a cinema advertising network, has partnered with Place Exchange, a supply-side platform for programmatic out-of-home media, to launch a programmatic offering with NCM's Lobby Entertainment Network, according to a company press release.

The partnership enables advertisers to purchase the largest network of lobby screens in movie theaters across the country programmatically.

NCM's network reaches more than 600 million moviegoers annually through the NCM network of over 1,600 theaters with over 20,600 screens throughout the U.S. The Place Exchange partnership with NCM enables advertisers to reach consumers via strategically located in-lobby video placements before and after watching a movie.

"NCM's expansion into programmatic marketplaces is a key enhancement of our efforts to help advertisers reach the 'unreachables' — our highly valuable, young, diverse cinema audience," Mike Rosen, CRO of NCM, said in the release. "Allowing our key client and agency partners access to our lobby assets through programmatic channels brings the efficiency of automation, along with the power of data, to unlock even more value from our inventory. Today's announcement to launch our Lobby Entertainment Network programmatically is the first step in our efforts to ultimately extend this offering to our big screen inventory in 2023."

With moviegoers returning to cinemas, the programmatic offering adds another avenue for marketers targeting Gen Z and young millennial consumers to leverage NCM's reach and scale with media buys.

Nearly one out of every two adults who visited a movie theater in the fourth quarter of 2021 and the first quarter of 2022 were 18-34-year-olds, and 79% of moviegoers attending an NCM theater are under the age of 39.

An analysis released by Ernst & Young on the broader economic impact of movie theaters analyzed pre-pandemic data and found that movie night spending increased to $5 billion through dining and retail activities on the day of theater visits.

"We are incredibly excited to be partnering with NCM to bring access to this highly coveted hard-to-reach audience to our programmatic buying partners," Dave Etherington, CCO of Place Exchange, said in the release. "This represents a true milestone in giving marketers the power to capture consumer attention during the moviegoing experience, leveraging all of the targeting, automation, flexibility and measurability of programmatic execution."

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