Read this sentence slowly: pre-movie ads at the theater will grow faster than internet advertising next year.
You got that right.
Ads shown for 10-20 minutes to a paying audience waiting for the real show to start will grow faster than the fastest, most modern, most digital advertising ecosystem ever created. The most annoying part of going to a theater is now also the fastest-growing sector in paid marketing.
But this shouldn’t be a shock, at least on one hand.
Not because cinema ads are shockingly effective — 8X better than TV, according to one study — and not because more people globally are going to movies than ever before. But it shouldn’t be a shock primarily because nothing can grow at huge rates forever.
Internet advertising has just gotten too big to grow at huge multiples.