Movie trailers are turning 100 years old next month, and while they’ve arguably evolved from simple marketing tactic into a film editing art form, there’s little that has fundamentally changed about what they do.  Trailers today are about turning a film’s best parts into a bite size commercial, same as it was when Leow’s theater advertising manager Nils Grunland debuted the first one for the The Pleasure Seekers in November 1913.  A century later, startup app maker Trailerpop has introduced a new way to interact with movie trailers, and it is trying to entice major studios to tap into its “game driven” approach to the way they use trailers to market their films.

Trailerpop, the brainchild of founder and CEO Jon Vlassopulos, is a free iOS and Android app that houses tens of thousands of trailers for new and old movies, but it’s more than just an archive. It adds a layer of interactivity over the experience of watching trailers, launching film trivia and puzzle games, and enabling instant social media sharing.  Just this week, the company announced what it’s calling a new “multiplayer” feature where users can challenge others in film trivia contests and weekly tournaments.  The app is also tied directly into Amazon and box office ticket sites, lubricating the purchase funnel for its users.

Trailerpop says it currently has hundreds of thousands of users around the world, with nearly 40 percent of its user base outside of the U.S. but right in Hollywood’s other key moneymaking territories — Latin America, Europe and Asia.  According to Vlassopulos, the app is driving impressive levels of engagement.

“People are watching about eight trailers on average across the platform, and the top players are watching almost two hours of movie trailers per month,” he said.

That ability to do more than just watch a trailer is also helping drive word of mouth for films, and not necessarily only what’s playing or coming up in theaters.

“It helps people discover movies, whether they’re new or old,” Vlassopulos said.  “We want to get people more engaged, spending more time with movies, and not necessarily what they usually watch.  And then actually watching them.”

Vlassopulos thinks Trailerpop’s games, which are primarily movie trivia but also include the occasional puzzle games, are doing more than just getting people to play with the app.

“When you have extra knowledge, you want to tell your friends, you want to share it,”he said.

Trailer pop’s new multiplayer feature is meant to further facilitate just that, getting users beyond just clicking the Facebook or Twitter button because they discover a film they like to actually get their friends on the app and engaged with it.  The feature is only available on Android, where the company says it’s having more success thanks to partnerships with Google Play Store and smartphone maker HTC.

“Ironically we came out first on iOS, but we’ve had more impact from our partnership with Google.” Vlassopulos said. ‘We’ve had some front page features [on Play Store], which has helped us grow organically.  And then we also have a partnership with HTC, so when you sign up for a new HTC phone, Trailerpop is one of the suggested apps.”

Outside of app users, Trailerpop says it has an email marketing list of 100,000 people.  Its goal is to partner with film marketers and their agencies to become part of their regular marketing efforts, including campaigns for older catalogue titles that get re-releases or renewed marketing pushes.

“We’d like to be accepted within [the studios’] marketing mix when they’re considering marketing for a new movie,” Vlassopulos said.  “But not only new movies, but also the value of Hollywood’s catalogue.  Here’s an interesting fact I can share with you guys, it’s that the catalogue viewers, the viewers who aren’t just viewing new trailers in our audience, we have about 70 percent of that usage for catalogue.”

Vlassopulos said that what film studios are spending on marketing through digital is shockingly little, especially considering how other forms of entertainment such as games and music are now largely relying on digital campaigns to drive awareness and purchase.  For that reason, Trailerpop sees lots of room for growth.

“We track what the studios spend [on marketing]…  it’s about $18-20 billion a year.  And only about five percent of that is spent on digital, and the majority of that is out of home and television.  So 95 percent of their spend is generally not actionable and not really trackable,” he said.

Trailer pop’s roadmap includes plans to introduce technology that can drive engagement with its app directly from some of those traditional ad placements, similar to what audio recognition app Shazam has been doing.  For instance, a film trailer on TV or online would prompt users to launch Trailerpop, which would then recognize the audio from the spot to take them directly to that film in the app.  Once there, they can engage with more content or purchase tickets.

Vlassopulos put it this way: “To us, marketing is a function where it’s not just where you hammer people in the head with a TV spot, or hammer people in the head with a billboard.  You can actually get people choosing to engage with your marketing.

Surprisingly, Trailerpop hasn’t yet incorporated video game trailers into its own mix.  When asked whether games are on the company’s radar, the first thing Vlassopulos mentioned was the $1 billion launch sales figure for GTA V, calling it “mind blowing.” He said the company has been talking with game marketers, who have shown interest in what the app can do.

“The initial feedback with game guys [we spoke with] was, ‘wow you guys combine all of the stuff we do anyway’, whether getting people to watch the trailer or getting them to know about the game,” Vlassopolos said, but then added, “Whether it’s games or television, I don’t know which one comes next, but games has quite the potential.”

Looking immediately ahead, Vlassopulos wants closer relationships with film studios.  Trailer pop’s recent campaign for Relativity Media’s Robert DeNiro and Michele Pfeiffer comedy The Family was an example of how a studio can embrace the app.  Relativity gave Trailerpop exclusive content and enlisted some of the stars of the film to compete with app users in a film trivia contest. Trailerpop then leveraged that traffic to show how it’s as much a marketing vehicle for new films as an Amazon-like referral service to drive catalogue sales. It had the film’s stars create lists of their own favorite movies, which users could then check out in the app and click over to Amazon to purchase.

“We’re trying to build a bridge between Hollywood and the Valley,” Vlassopulos said.  “It will be technology disrupting entertainment, but where it’s adding value.”