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Movie Marketing

Facebook not getting the movie advertising love

According to a recent Adweek story, Facebook is having trouble attracting big ad dollars from the Hollywood studios. The lack of buy-in seems to be due to a mix of not feeling the desired demographic is actually on Facebook, that there’s little to no story to tell there through ads and more.

It’s an interesting shift, particularly when you get to the part of the story about how studios are doing more with Tumblr, which *does* seem to match their demographic targeting needs better. I’ve been watching movie marketing long enough that this, if substantial and widespread, would represent a third great shift in social network marketing, from MySpace to Facebook and now to Tumblr, with Twitter acting as the connective tissue between lots of that.

Of note is one agency executive who calls Facebook out for not being visual enough to appeal to younger users. Making Facebook into more of a visual experience has been the guiding principle behind many of the network’s recent acquisitions and changes for precisely this reason, to attract more young users and provide a more appealing playground for brands – and their advertisements – to be in. Which is why there’s such eagerness for the auto-play video ads Facebook has reportedly been testing.

It should be clear that this is just about advertising on Facebook. There doesn’t seem to be any move away from movies having a presence on the social network, promoting the film through various updates and so on.