At The Boxoffice Company, we created a Benchmark Report for ten top circuits in the US and UK using Google Analytics to assess current vs. previous online performance and measure it against a range of metrics.

While the pandemic made meaningful comparisons across some metrics more complex, we see dramatic shifts in online customer behavior, particularly the lean towards purchasing movie tickets online. While the volumes of website visits and ticket sales are understandably lower, the pandemic has accelerated the move towards online purchasing. This increase is evident in the statistically significant jumps in Conversion Rate (the proportion of people who purchase when visiting your website). There has also been a widespread uplift in Average Order Values online, although we believe several factors are at play here.

F9 vs. Avengers: End Game

To understand these metrics in context, we have compared the performance of the opening weekend of F9 – the best-performing post-pandemic movie – to the opening weekend for Avengers: End Game, the film that ‘broke’ the internet, smashing the Box Office to be the highest-grossing movie ever. And here is what we found:

Conversion Rate

The benchmark identified an average conversion rate for F9 opening weekend of 8.2%, a 20% increase over Avenger’s conversion rate. For context, the average ecommerce conversion rate is around 3%, although entertainment brands usually perform slightly better than this.

Tentpole pictures always drive strong advanced bookings – so a 20% increase in conversion rate is significant because we’re comparing it to Avengers – the biggest film of all time – and this is despite lower overall volume sales.

The increase was also noticeable on mobile devices, with almost 85% of ALL transactions being made using a mobile device. In 2019, the average mobile transaction conversion was nearer 78%.  

The results confirm the shift towards advanced booking driven by the pandemic. Reduced seating capacity and social distancing have made it critical to secure seats in advance and reduce touch points. In addition, many theatres have been moving to entirely reserved seating, which was a known driver of online sales.

Average Order Value

Also known as per-caps, the average order values were 15% higher during F9’s opening weekend.  Per-cap is a fundamental metric for exhibitors, the more income secured in advance, the better. 

There are a few contributing factors here – the growth in premium experiences, whether a PLF experience or premium seating options such as VIP, recliners, or heated seats, all carry a premium price. 

We also saw the addition and consumer adoption of online F&B during the pandemic, with some exhibitors now building this into their online sales journey. 

Summary

Making it easy and secure for moviegoers to purchase online is only one part of the industry’s successful weekend.  We congratulate studios and exhibitors on your marketing efforts to bring your moviegoers back to theatres. We wish you all the best in the months and years to come, and we cannot wait to see even more moviegoers fill up auditoriums for titles like Black Widow, Space Jam, Suicide Squad, and dare we say, No Time to Die.  

Contact us if you would like any more information on our Benchmark Report and how you performed.

*Definitions:

Conversion Rate

The proportion of transactions relative to sessions on your website or mobile app as a percent; for example, 1 transaction from 100 sessions is an ecommerce conversion rate of 1%. This statistic can help you assess the effectiveness of your marketing and site design. For any ecommerce business the benchmark is around 3%.

Average Order Value

The average financial value of all orders over a given period, including the sales value of tickets, F&B, gift cards and service fees.

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Back in May Google brought their invite only yearly meetings online and available to the masses. So we jumped on the opportunity to capture all the interesting updates and insights for whats coming in the world of Paid Adverstising.

The most significant update noted for Google Ads was the upcoming rollout of the new Performance Max campaigns to Google Ads.  

So, for the purpose of this article we will take you through the review of Performance Max Campaigns and how these have the potential to be a success in driving online awareness and ticket sales for your cinemas. 

What are Performance Max Campaigns? 

Performance Max campaigns are a new campaign type which will run across all of Google’s products including Search, Display, Gmail, YouTube, Discover and more. 

Google is aiming to streamline the process of targeting these channels, rather than creating individual campaigns to target each one, we can utilize Google’s machine learning and optimize for all of it with a single campaign type – Performance Max. 

Google has been pushing users towards utilizing smart bidding strategies within Google Ads rather than manually tweaking bids and this campaign type is merely the next iteration of automation. 

How does targeting work? 

When setting up a campaign you will be prompted by Google to set your Goal – for example More Sales. 

Based on your goal, Google’s machine learning will find your customers wherever they are across Google properties.

Many of the options familiar in Google Ads campaigns remain for Performance Max, you still can decide on your budget and even bidding strategy, so whether you want Google to optimize your campaign for a certain Cost Per user Acquisition (CPA) or a Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) you can do so. 

Be realistic with a budget, bearing in mind that you are targeting a number of different channels. 

Location targeting is also available meaning cinemas can easily be targeted on a per location basis ensuring the users targeted remains relevant to the campaign. 

Asset Groups 

Asset groups are the new name for Ads within Performance Max campaigns. This is where we will give Google all the creative that we are happy to use as part of the campaign. We can provide images, logos, videos, headlines, text and more.  

Google will then serve these assets across all their platforms and optimize using their machine learning algorithm to provide the best results. 

Creating and uploading the right assets  will be critical to any campaign’s success and will likely be the biggest investment in terms of time for these campaigns. 

This is also an area which will need to be continually tested and improved upon to maximise results. 

What are the positives? 

The barrier for entry of having campaigns running across all these Google platforms previously would have been extremely high and perhaps reserved for only the biggest players with the most budget. Having them all under a single campaign in which Google utilises machine learning provides smaller cinemas an opportunity to test these channels. 

Google’s automation, particularly around smart bidding, has worked extremely well for many advertisers (including ourselves) and so using this technology further is an exciting opportunity. 

What’s the downside? 

There remain some question marks from experienced Google Ads professionals around the ability to run one campaign across so many channels and still be successful. Google is saying that with the power of machine learning, optimizing these on an individual level is unnecessary but that remains to be seen. 

Reporting is also described as being weak (although these campaigns are currently still in BETA) – in its current iteration there is no reporting on audiences, keyword targeting, no demographic information etc. – this will ultimately make it difficult for advertisers to get a full picture of what is taking place in their campaigns, yet if its producing results many will not be too fussed with this. 

Final Thoughts

We are excited about the introduction of these new campaigns, Google has been pushing advertisers to adapt to their machine learning and automated bidding for a few years now and previously testing smart bidding we have seen excellent performance in most of our campaigns. 

With the introduction of Performance Max there is an opportunity to focus more on the overall strategy and marketing funnel and leave the time consuming and monotonous tasks to Google. 

These campaigns are not widely available to the public as of yet however if you would like to discuss the opportunity to run these campaigns when they are available, please get in touch as we would love to have a chat with you. 

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So, what are the core web vitals?

Anyone who has been following Google Search over the last 5 years or so will not be surprised to learn that core web vitals are all about the User Experience (UX) and the page experience score that Google provides.

Google continues to strive to provide the best web that they possibly can for users, and this latest announcement follows in the trend of mobile first indexing and page speed ranking factor.

Core Web Vitals measures 3 metrics which are:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) – LCP measures loading performance and a good LCP will be under 2.5 seconds
• First Input Delay (FID) – FID measures the interactivity of the page – FID should be less than 100 milliseconds
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) – CLS measures visual stability – a good score will be a CLS of less than 0.1

Each web vital will grade web pages on 3 outcomes – Good (passes), Needs Improvement and Fail

Thankfully Google have provided users several tools to measure the 3 core web vitals including:

• Google Lighthouse
• Google Page Speed Insights
• Google Search Console

What kind of impact these new signals will have on rankings is anyone’s guess at this stage, however these 3 metrics are also likely to impact on the overall UX of the website. They could affect website usage and conversion rates so paying attention to them would be strongly recommended.

We do know that content remains the most important thing for Google in ranking so just improving your Core Web Vitals won’t be enough to get you ahead of your competitors if your On Page content and SEO is weak however if your content is on par with others then improving your core web vitals could make the difference between position 1 and 2.

You will find that if you are using a website which makes use of various templates that any issues you encounter will likely be replicated across all pages which use that specific template. This means if you have thousands of errors reported in search console it may not be as big a job to fix as you think.

What does this mean for cinemas?

So, cinemas  will have to pay attention to these metrics and should begin planning for any improvements required ahead of May.

Some of the early issues which we have encountered on cinema websites include:

• CLS issues arising as a result of API calls for movie listings
• CLS issues with session pickers
• LCP issues from images in banners being too large
• LCP issues from external images like movie posters loaded at a size which is too large

Core Web Vitals are now just a few of the hundreds of signals which Google is looking at when deciding to rank a website, working alongside an SEO who understands search ranking and how to improve it is becoming more critical as the algorithms get more complex and search more competitive.

The Boxoffice Company would love to have a chat with you around your experience with search marketing and how we can potentially improve your position to earn you more traffic and ticket sales. Get in touch with Boxoffice at info@boxoffice.com or find out more about our SEO service.

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How hard is your website working? Are you seeing big increases in online ticket sales? Spikes in Google traffic? Is your email list growing?

If you’re not enjoying double-digit growth, you need a content marketing strategy that turns occasional ticket buyers into repeat and loyal fans!

The key to building a website that drives online ticket sales is to pack it with content that pulls in moviegoers when they’re searching for showtimes and tickets online.

The cinema journey starts at home… generally with a Google search. Let’s say that Dad wants to take the kids to a family-friendly movie. He types “family movie” into Google and is immediately led to an article on your website showcasing the latest animated film, complete with ticket times for your theater.

Or suppose a teen is looking for a date movie. He types “horror movie” into the search box and is soon watching a trailer on your News page alongside a deal you run for discounted tickets on Tuesdays.

A thoughtful content market strategy pulls in customers when they’re most likely to buy. It answers their questions, delivers just-in-time info, and nudges them into a purchase.

But you have to have good content – content that resonates with your customers and gets you discovered even outside the context of an immediate transaction.

What kind of content do I need?

Naturally, movie fans like to watch trailers. Parents and fans alike enjoy reviews. Young adults want behind-the-scenes B-roll while seniors will read director interviews and historical editorial.

Which means you need all kinds of content to reach all your different customers and appeal to their information needs.

Creating a content marketing strategy that reaches – and resonates – with all your different constituencies is tough on your own. Creating content is expensive, optimizing content is time-consuming, and keeping it fresh and dynamic is overwhelming!

An easier solution is to team up with Boxoffice Studios for a proven fan content marketing strategy that can triple your site traffic and 10x your ticket sales.

Boxoffice Studios provides all the different types of content you need, optimized to put you at the top of the search page.

Boxoffice Studios knows what’s working in what markets and it produces different forms of content that resonates with families, singles, young adults, seniors and more.

Best of all, its content optimized to rank you high in searches, build brand loyalty, and drive online ticket sales. Content like:

• Movie Trailers
• Actor Interviews
• Fan Theories

By signing up with Boxoffice Studios, you can pick and choose which content to use on your site and build a comprehensive content marketing strategy that attracts new site traffic, promotes your theater, and keeps you at the top of SEO and social rankings.

Getting started

Interested in exploring more on this topic? Contact Boxoffice Studios at info@boxoffice.com

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