And digital might be the only thing that can fix it.
Cinema advertising in India has not recovered to its 2019 peak. Everyone knows this. The easy explanation is COVID. But COVID was five years ago.
The harder truth is OTT.
Before streaming, there was urgency. A film released on Friday, and if you missed it in the first two weeks, you waited months. That urgency brought people to the hall. It also brought advertisers. Aamir Khan captured the problem plainly on Aap Ki Adalat: “Today, we’ve brought this situation upon ourselves. We tell audiences, ‘Come to the theatre and watch the film.’ But if they don’t, we say, ‘No problem, we’ll come to your house in eight weeks.’ Why would they bother coming to theatres then?” He backed that conviction with action. Refusing OTT deals reportedly worth ₹60-65 crore for Sitaare Zameen Par, he said he intended to breathe life back into cinema rather than optimise for economics.
Watching movies in theatres is now an experience game
The audience that still goes to the cinema is not the same as in 2019. It has become more deliberate. People are not going just to watch a film. They are going for an evening out. The multiplex is inside a mall. There is shopping, dining, and a drive. The film is the anchor but rarely the only reason.
BookMyShow’s 2025 report noted that stepping out for a film, gig, comedy show or cultural experience had become as routine as dining out, with audiences actively seeking stories, music and performances that resonated with global standards. An earlier survey by the platform, covering 650 towns and cities, found that 90% of respondents cited catching the latest movie release as their usual go-to option for out-of-home experiences, alongside shopping, live gigs and adventure outings. 98% said cinematic magic can only be brought alive on the big screen. 35% of Gen Z said they prefer watching a film on the first day, first show.
These are not passive consumers sitting through content. They are experience-chasers who have made a deliberate choice to step away from their screens and spend money on an evening. Cinema chains have read this shift correctly.
PVR INOX’s premium formats now span IMAX, 4DX, ScreenX, Director’s Cut, ICE Theatres, Insignia, MX4D, Onyx, Luxe and last-row recliners, all positioned as aspirational choices for a more discerning audience. The company currently holds about 14% market share in premium formats and has stated plans to expand that to 20%.
The cinema experience product has genuinely improved. Premium screens are seeing 35-40% occupancy, noticeably ahead of the overall multiplex average of 28-30%. The advertising product around it has not kept pace.
The advertising numbers tell a grimmer story
Cinema AdEx in India sits at roughly ₹877 crore. Less than 1% of total advertising spend. Still below the ₹1,050 crore the medium earned in 2019, even as India’s overall box office crossed ₹13,500 crore in 2025. Screens recovered. Footfalls recovered. Advertising revenue did not follow.
The Dhurandhar 2 release looks like evidence of a revival. Over 70 national brands and nearly 400 advertisers locked in for the theatrical release, spanning FMCG, automobiles, BFSI and technology. But look at why brands committed so confidently. It was not because cinema had become easier to plan. It was because Part 1 had already proven its audience. Same logic applied to Pushpa 2 and Kantara 2. Brands were betting on a sequel’s inheritance, not on the medium’s predictability.
Remove the sequels and the picture changes. Bade Miyan Chote Miyan had a ₹350 crore budget, two major action stars and collected ₹110 crore. Adipurush had a ₹700 crore budget and collected ₹392 crore. Any brand that had locked premium inventory around those releases had no recourse.
This is why media planners treat cinema as an afterthought. One tentpole can light up the market for a week or two. It cannot fix a medium that is still below its 2019 advertising peak despite record theatrical revenues. No annual brand strategy can be built around a medium whose performance depends entirely on whether the films that quarter connect with audiences.
The problem is not attention. Cinema has always had that. The problem is that attention without predictability and measurement will always be treated as a bonus, not a foundation.
On-ground activations: full marks, incomplete results
To be fair, cinema networks have been trying to change this. Brands now run 270-degree immersive AV, foyer takeovers, sampling counters, AR experiences and lobby branding. Some of it is genuinely impressive. When a brand owns the entry walkway before a blockbuster, the quality of engagement is hard to replicate anywhere else.
But it is episodic. A weekend. A film. A burst of attention that dissipates by Monday.
The deeper problem is structural. A brand runs a strong foyer activation on Saturday night. The audience is engaged, in a good mood, surrounded by the brand’s world. Then they walk out of the cinema. And the brand has no way to follow them. No retargeting. No connection between what happened in that foyer and what the consumer thinks or does a week later.
The experience ends at the exit door. That is the real problem.
The mental model: two layers, one audience
Think of it this way.
Digital is the targeting layer. It knows who the right person is, where they live, what they have been browsing and what they are likely to consider next. What it cannot do is make them stop. In a feed full of content, even a perfectly targeted ad competes with everything else on the screen.
Cinema is the experience layer. It cannot tell you much about who is sitting in the hall. But when that person is there, they are completely present. No second screen. No scroll. No skip button. The lights are off, the sound is loud, and the brand has two uninterrupted minutes with someone who paid to be in that room.
Two powerful things. Both are incomplete on their own. The question is whether they can work as a single connected system rather than two separate buys on two separate plans.
This is where ticketing apps become the missing piece.
What the ticketing layer unlocks
BookMyShow commands roughly 78% of online movie ticketing in India. That is not just market share. That is a logged-in, first-party data set of tens of millions of users with known behaviour — which cities they live in, what genres they prefer, which languages they watch, how often they go out, what price points they accept and what live events they attend beyond films.
That data is the bridge between digital and cinema. It tells you, before anyone enters the hall, who is likely to be in which show, in which city, on which weekend.
Use that to target digital first. Then deliver the experience in the hall. Then pick up on digital again after the show. Same person. Same message. Three moments of contact instead of one isolated impression.
Right now, none of this is designed as a single product. Ticketing apps sell their inventory. Cinemas sell theirs. The connection between the two exists only in the audience’s head. The brand sees none of it.
What it looks like in practice
Imagine a new mid-premium SUV launching in four metros.
The campaign needs to reach urban professionals, 28-40, NCCS A, who are in an active consideration window for their next car. That audience goes to the cinema. They book tickets on an app. They watch films in premium formats. They are already in the system.
Before the show- Two weeks before the campaign goes on-screen, the brand uses the ticketing platform’s first-party data to run targeted digital creatives — short, attention-grabbing, designed to prime. Not to explain the car. Just to plant the name and the visual. The audience sees this while browsing the app or booking their next film. It is a signal, not a sales pitch.
In the hall- The brand runs a 60-second film in premium multiplex screens in the same cities, timed around two or three high-footfall weekends. The creative now goes deeper. The car on an open road. The sound design doing the work that a phone speaker never could. The audience is leaned back in a recliner, relaxed, in a 4K environment with Dolby Atmos. They are not scrolling. They are watching. This is the experience layer doing what only cinema can do.
After the show. Within 48 hours, the same users see a retargeted digital ad. Not the same film — something shorter, with a call to action. Book a test drive. The creative lands differently because it is arriving on the back of a strong memory, not cold.
Three touchpoints. One audience.
Why this is not just digital plus cinema
Brands have combined digital and cinema before. The difference here is the shared data signal.
Without ticketing data, digital and cinema are parallel lines. You buy on-screen slots. You run digital ads. You hope the same person sees both. You have no way to confirm it, no way to sequence the message and no way to measure what the combination actually did.
With ticketing data as the connective layer, the two media become a loop. You know the audience you primed on digital showed up in those halls. You know who was exposed to the on-screen film. You can retarget specifically those people afterwards. And you can compare their behaviour — did they search for the brand, visit the website, book a test drive — against a matched control group who saw neither.
That is not estimated footfalls. That is audience-level accountability from a medium that has never had it before.
What makes this moment right for it
The infrastructure for this collaboration already exists. Ticketing apps already run brand campaigns. Cinemas already sell on-screen and foyer inventory. The first-party data is already being collected. What does not exist is the integrated product that connects them, and the media plan that treats them as one.
Cinema chains are actively investing in the experience layer because they understand that the audience coming to halls today is paying for something beyond the film. VIP and premium lounges at cinema and live venues nearly doubled in footfall in 2025, with more than 1.8 million fans attending events solo — a signal of growing comfort with independent, experience-led consumption choices. Ticketing platforms are sitting on audience intelligence that most media owners would pay a great deal to access.
The missing piece is a joint commercial model that lets a brand buy across both in a single conversation, with shared targeting, sequenced creative and unified measurement.
Cinema is not an alternative to digital. It is the place where your digital targeting finally gets the attention it deserves.
That conversation has not started at scale in India yet. It should.
Data in this piece draws from Pitch Madison Advertising Report 2025, Ormax Media’s Sizing The Cinema 2024, BookMyShow CineFiles Survey and Throwback 2025 Report, FICCI-EY India M&E Report 2025, and PVR INOX investor and brand communications.
