Long before its first sneak preview, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was a monster hit. Not with moviegoers—with marketers.

Industry insiders suggest that advertisers fought a major bidding war to tie their products with film. Why the fuss? Because Indiana Jones is cross-generational and cross-gender, making it a cross-promoter's dream.

The eventual victors in the tie-in title match—Expedia.com, Kraft, and Mars among others—have each launched costly campaigns with interactive appeal.

In case you didn't notice, Indiana Jones is not alone. Kung Fu Panda, Iron Man, Speed Racer, The Dark Knight, and even Sex and the City have piled onto the cross-promotion bandwagon this summer. (For a look at the six biggest winners, click here.)

It's a big bandwagon indeed: Spending can easily match or exceed the estimated $3.5 billion that all studios budget to market movies.

The goal? To start: Produce recordbreaking box office receipts and heightened brand awareness. But some are innovating in the field. The business of hype is growing, even in a down economy, and a new school of advertisers are trying to redefine this industry within an industry.

The allure of Hollywood is its ability to help advertisers stand out to the jaded, overwhelmed consumer. "Why do brands go back? Because they want to break through the clutter, draft off brand awareness and brand affinity," says Alden Stoner, director of the film department at Davie Brown Entertainment, a Los Angeles firm that specializes in brokering cross-promotional deals.

Incremental revenue is rarely the goal, even for advertisers selling big-ticket products like autos and electronics. It's the desire to equate their brands with the "emotional connotation of the movie," says Stoner. They want to sell the adventure of Indiana Jones, the mystery of The Dark Knight, and the sex of Sex and the City in specially marked packages at a store near you.

And ad spending is up—52 percent in 2007 according to an Accenture study, and 24 percent in the motion media category alone, which includes movie and TV. A cross-promotional movie campaign for each product can cost between $2 million and $20 million, depending on the film's buzz and whether a bidding war erupts over the rights to be an exclusive partner in a particular category.

As the competition for both advertisers and studios comes to a boil during the summer months, innovation is king.

"There's a need to research new ways to integrate message and content," says Entertainment Weekly publisher Scott Donaton. "These partnerships lead to the box office."