That the truckload size popcorn you order at your local multiplex could soon cost you $7 – and that fountain soda practically does already – is only one grievance Americans express about their movie theatre-going experience. It's also those damn ads that play before the movie. Before the previews. Cinemas like the celebrated Arclight in Los Angeles, where guests reserve their seats ahead of time, refuse to show these pre-feature ads; they also charge a steep ticket price.

But don't think for a minute these ad reels are going to the wayside anytime soon. That's because they're one of the most profitable things in the movie biz.

A new report from the Cinema Advertising Council has both The Hollywood Reporter and Variety breaking the news: On-screen advertising grew 18.5 percent, to just under $540 million, in 2007.

(Somehow that's led Variety to conclude "movie theater advertising has [...] become the most powerful ad vehicle outside of the Internet," even though the TV networks just completed more than $9 billion in upfront sales.)

What's to explain media buyers' growing faith in a medium that often draws boos from the audience? Perhaps a little study from Arbitron released last year, which concluded the majority of "frequent moviegoers" recalled specific ads — and didn't mind having to sit through the ads before the movie. (Whoever checked that box: Screw you.)

So powerful is in-theatre advertising, in 2005 National CineMedia even re-introduced The 2wenty, a 20-minute pre-preview adver-tainment clip show that pimps everything from television shows to Pepsi.

While ticket sales are usually split 50-50 between theatre owners and the movie studios – okay, it's a little more complicated than that – which is why the concession stand prices are so expensive (that all goes to the house), the revenue generated from the ads that play before the films almost exclusively end up in the hands of the owners.

Perhaps most interestingly, then, is to look at where this business was just a half dozen years ago: Floating along amid skepticism, class-action lawsuits, and Madison Avenue's ambivalence.