product introductions and short product life cycles, the movie industry is known for unusually high levels of advertising (Rennhoff & Wilbur, 2011). The average advertising expenditure for a movie amounts to $36m, with the largest part allocated to trailer advertising (Karray & Debernitz, 2017).
This high expenditure may occur because movie trailers are one of the most influential sources throughout the consumer decision process to see a movie. According to a study by Google, 94% of variation in a film’s box office opening can be explained with trailer-related searches on Google and YouTube four weeks prior to release (Google, 2013), and according to the Motion Pictures Association of America, 54% of movie-attendees report watching a trailer before attending a movie (Karray & Debernitz, 2017). This poses the movie trailer as a crucial advertising medium to get right.
Traditional marketing endeavors target relevant consumers through segmentation practices. However, demographic and psychographic composition of audiences vary too much from movie to movie to be able to target consumers effectively in the possible time-span (Hixson, 2005). As trailers are usually released in a one-size-fits-all manner, the clips used in these advertisements are selected to appeal to a wide audience. Due to time and budget constraints, catering different movie trailers to different audience segments would be difficult task.
With the shift of content to the digital realm, many new avenues for advertising are opening up. One highly notable development is the rise of personalized experiences, with brands that are taking advantage of the opportunities of personalization seeing revenues increase two to three times faster than those that do not (BCG, 2017). Whereas segmentation seems to be based on the problem that each consumer cannot be targeted individually, personalization may counter this rhetoric altogether. In an industry in which large sums of money are spent on one-size-fits-all advertising, personalization of trailer advertisements may help studios target consumers on an individual level.

1.2 Research question