In the total advertising media mix, cinema is regarded as a supplementary medium. Its inherent characteristics of sight, sound, and motion presented on a wide screen to a captive audience, make it a very powerful advertising medium.

Per industry estimates, the cinema advertising pie in the Philippines is worth P150 Million a year. In a comparison to other media, cinema is very affordable. Advertisers need not worry about long term commitments, which are standard impositions from the traditional media. A minimum one-theater seven-day exhibition order is all it takes to go cinema. For a budget of P90,000 the prevailing rate for a 30-second spot on primetime TV, an advertiser can place one 30-second on a blockbuster movie the likes of Minsan Minahal Kita, a Sharon Cuneta starrer and The World is Not enough. This will be shown five (5) times a day for seven days in major theaters in Metro Manila. At the end of the day, the Advertiser would have forcefully and meaningfully communicated his message to captive and unduplicated audience of more than P450, 000. Movie houses are now standard fares in shopping malls. This gives the cinema medium an added bonus feature. It took on the character of a potent point of purchase tool. An average moviegoer is no longer a stranger to cinema commercials from food chain outlets who find this particular feature very compatible to their needs.

Cinema advertising goes back to the mid 1950's. Those were the days when commercial and movie producers doubled as bookers and the cinema commercial came in the form of five-minute documentaries. In 1963, when color commercials were introduced, the commercial length was reduced to one-minute. The rise of the medium suffered a setback when its use was banned for two years (1973 ? 1075) during the martial law regime. When the cinema the cinema ban was finally lifted, the commercials were further shortened to 30-seconds and this has become the standard in cinema placement up to the present.

The period 1979 to 1982 were considered The Golden Years for Cinema Advertising. Most of the major advertisers believed in its merits and included the medium in their media plans. 1983 witnessed the advent and subsequent popularity of the video technology in the field of commercial production. This affected the industry greatly. The situation was further aggravated by the political turmoil and economic collapse in the country, which was trigerred, by the Aquino assassination that culminated in EDSA. While the trend in commercial production was slowly going back to films in 1988, the climate for cinema also showed signs of improvements. The scenario took a turn for the better when the power crisis, which straddled the Aquino and Ramos administrations, hit the country. The potency of TV dipped considerably because viewership was at its lowest ebb. In the meantime, more and more people were turning out in the movie houses, prompted by these realities, the advertisers through the cinema booking sector, took a hard look at the medium and decided that, indeed, cinema was the logical, if not, the better alternative. This confluence of events, plus substantial gains made in Kinescoping in terms of technical quality and affordability, placed cinema advertising well on the road to a full recovery.

Today the movie is still regarded as the cheapest form of entertainment. It is the number one leisure activity of 65% of the country's adult population. Majority of the movie houses are now found in shopping malls in Metro Manila and key cities and making it accessible to the average moviegoer. State-of-the-art facilities from hi-tech projections and sophisticated sound systems to superior ventilation and physical accommodations are standard in today's movie houses, these, and a crop of now accepted Tagalog and Hollywood blockbusters in the marquee are excellent incentives to draw more and more people to the movie houses. Under these favorable conditions, coupled with continuing fine-tuning efforts undertaken by the cinema-booking sector to further improve the medium, Cinema Advertising in the Philippines is assured of its rightful place in the advertising scene.
-Winnie Baling, CAAP