In the age of viral videos and Internet marketing, the theatrical movie poster is becoming a relic. With our eyes glued to our cell phones and tablets, do we even notice a traditional paper poster anymore? According to South Korean film distributor CJ Entertainment and ad agency Cheil, the answer is “no.”

The company has a plan to bring “the oldest and least popular” ad medium into the 21st century – by adding Wi-Fi hotspots to popular movie posters.

If you’re at all like me, your first reaction was “Why would anyone do this?” However, after watching its video and seeing its results, the idea is a lot more interesting than first realized.

To test out the service, CJ Entertainment placed Wi-Fi-enabled posters around various parts of Seoul. When people wandered within range, the new network popped up onto their device under the name of the film it was advertising. Users who joined that network were then taken to the film’s home page, where they could watch HD clips, read about the movie, and even buy tickets. Pretty handy.

The test run results were impressive. Site traffic for movies using the Wi-Fi posters went up by 28.5%. Users who accessed the sites through the service spent five times as long browsing the official sites as those who came in from other areas of the Internet. We didn’t see any data on how it affected ticket sales, but it did seem to at least get people more interested in the films than a traditional poster would.

I’m curious to see how this would work in America. It sounds like a cool idea – at least until everyone starts doing it and a walk past the local movie house blasts you with 30 new poster network invites. That might get a little annoying.

Check out the video below. Is this the wave of the future or another gimmick we’ll laugh about in a few years? Would you use one of these if it was available here?

[via Design Taxi]