Online film marketing has traditionally been limited to banner ads and official websites. The growing popularity of social networking sites and the recent announcement by Facebook to broaden its advertising platform has opened the door to new possibilities in film promotion.

This is big news for the major studios, but also the best chance yet for the indies to compete in the online marketing game. The opportunities are wide open and they tend to reward the creative marketer -- not necessarily those with the bigger marketing budgets. Advertising through a social networking site like Facebook, MySpace, or Twitter revisits one of the most basic principals of marketing itself: Word of Mouth.

To understand why advertisers are salivating over the growing popularity of social networking sites, it is important to understand how a site like this works.

The social netword sites allow users to build personal profile pages detailing anything such as their likes, dislikes, goals… in order to meet friends and build social groups. Acting as a virtual human chain, members can invite or be invited onto other contact lists where they are free to interact. Users belonging to a group are kept updated of movements or variations in the other contact pages.

Changes announced by Facebook have given advertisers the opportunity to target consenting members of the site based on the information in their personal profile pages. This means that marketers can direct their campaign at a specific age demographic, and also to the personal interests of the user. A user listing an interest in comic books, for example, may be targeted by a studio promoting the new Batman film.

Network pages can now be created by brands instead of just people. A brand-specific page is free to create and can include anything a regular website contains, with the added bonus that it too can generate its own contact list. Users can interact with the page by making comments, downloading widgets, or reading the latest news associated with the film. These actions are then included in the feed that gets sent out to that visitor’s entire contact list, thus creating a chain reaction where they have the opportunity to be part of the film’s promotion.

Advertisers hope this will act as a kind of personal recommendation from a friend, instead of an advertisement from a film studio. Interest in the film is heightened, conversation is sparked between users, and the all important word of mouth is generated.

While Hollywood marketing budgets currently devote only a small percentage to online advertising, there is evidence that this may soon change. Sony’s Columbia Tri-Star announced that audience surveys for two of their recent hit films, Superbad and Resident Evil: Extinction showed online marketing as the primary source of awareness. A first for the company and an occurrence that should act as a wake up call to all studios and indies alike.

In Part two we will discuss how the independent film industry can utilize this platform to market their films.