From RAIN and Wired.com: “Hollywood — always in search of hip, influential people who can get others to go see a film — is spending an increasing portion of its collective marketing resources online, shifting budgets and attention from traditional media like television and print toward the Web… “Hollywood doesn’t have a choice. Young men and other desirable audiences are not watching television, and they are relying less on newspapers to find reviews and movie times, according to industry research.

“For example, to advertise ‘The Manchurian Candidate,’ a political drama, Paramount Pictures has launched an advertising campaign on political blogs like Instapundit.com and The Truth Laid Bear… It shows that Hollywood is showing increasing sophistication in using the Internet to reach a specific potential audience with a tightly focused pitch — something that’s becoming nearly impossible with network television.

“47 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds prefer the Web to traditional media for information about movies, versus 33 percent of 35- to 44-year-olds and 24 percent of 45- to 54-year-olds… “For the film industry, finding new ways to reach young males in particular is crucial. That’s because young men under 34 are watching less television than they have in the past, spending more of their free time doing other activities, like playing video games or surfing online… “

hypebot comments: Why isn’t the music industry doing more of this? It’s past due that they too reach out to target audiences via non-music online communities and publications.

Read the entire article online here.