I can hear the groans from this title already people hate pop up advertising, and so many marketers ignore them as a medium. But they have their uses because they are successful and very low cost. Netflix uses them as a major part of their marketing scheme, as I'm sure many of you have seen. Pop ups then are already associated with the movie industry, as well they should be, for with the low earnings per purchase of a ticket and the need to reach broad audiences there are few advertising methods which are so effective in the short term.
The downside to pop ups has of course been that people hate them and so they can create a negative brand over time, however for an indie film it is rare that you need to build a brand in the same way companies like Coke do. What's more the amount of time you have to market your film is relatively short, so there is very little time for long term brand building or destruction before a film comes out in theaters, What you really need is people to purchase tickets online or know the film exists. One of your primary goals in advertising an indie film is name recognition so that customers purchase the tickets at the box office when the time comes. Branding the film is a long term goal and usually doesn't occur until part way through the theatrical showing, so before then pop ups are a good medium to use.
Beyond just being a low cost solution pop ups provide another major solution to marketing movies as well. They can be a place where a trailer can be inserted without the need to pay multi thousand dollar minimums of rich media networks, or the High per click and CPM rates of Google's networks.
The challenge to pop ups when using the theatrical trailer approach however is that if you purchase say 1,000,000 pop ups for example then you will likely have to stream 500 or more gigs of information. This is a serious problem for many servers, especially if you have people from other sources coming to watch the films trailer. One way around this is to utilize a video sharing service to stream the trailer.
There is one other draw back to pop up advertising when it comes to indie films; this is that most indie films show in very limited areas to a very targeted audience. It is often much more difficult to target properly with pop ups. There are some networks that have page redirects which could work much the same as a pop up with regards to streaming video. These redirects can be fairly well targeted to metro area's although even this is not perfect. Pop ups then are better suited to films that you believe will show up in most of the major cities in the country at some point, or which you are trying to sell DVD's of.
In general then pop ups despite voir film being cheaper are one of the many forms of advertising that smaller players such as the creators of many indie films are left out on. For those who can utilize them however they may be the most effective means of marketing your film you will ever find.
