It's bad when, on a Sunday surrounded by my family, friends and a whole bunch of good food while watching the Bears game, I was just as interested in the ads as the game itself. During Sunday's broadcast I saw spots run for Epic Movie, 300 and The Hitcher. One of the guys I was watching with remarked that he hadn't seen anything about 300 before, which struck me as odd until I remembered that I probably have very different media consumption habits than he does. Where I read RSS constantly, he probably is primarily getting his media from TV. 300 has been getting tons of online coverage and that's where a good deal of the marketing has been done to date. I've seen a few TV spots but - and here's the interesting thing - not on TV. I've watched them on YouTube or something but haven't actually seen the commercials on the media they were created for.

But that raises an interesting question: What media were they created for? Yeah, they are called "TV spots" but considering how specialized TV viewing has become, what platform will more people see those elements via? I'd speculate it's online where most viewing will happen simply because they can be sought out and essentially viewed on demand. On TV you have to be in the right place at the right time in order to see the spot.

And right there I think you have the problem with TV advertising. It relies on a combination of timing, broad targeting and pure luck.
In other theatrical marketing news:

• Dreamworks promoted Anne Globes to be its new chief marketing officer.
• 20th Century Fox chose Zenith Media to take over its media buying duties.
• Hewlett-Packard and Sony teamed up for a commercial featuring the Ghost Rider trying to do some banking.
• Fuel Industries created a very cool online game for the DVD release of Crank.