What is the difference between a trailer and a teaser trailer?

A teaser trailer like it says in the name, is a trailer that is meant to tease the audience about an upcoming film, TV program, video game or similar. It is a production of short, but exciting clips that show the audience the production without showing the story line, as they are just getting a glimpse of the production, before it has been released so that they is a major hype before it comes out. They contain little of the film footage and are usually from 30-60 seconds long. Generally they are only usually made for big-budget movies that can afford to advertise twice with the teaser and theatrical trailers. Teaser trailers can be released way earlier than expected as one film's teaser (The Incredibles) was attach the film Finding Nemo (May 2003) a full 18 months before The Incredibles was released. Also a lot of the teaser trailers don’t include the title of the product, only the producers name as in the teaser trailer of Cloverfield, it was shown publicly attached to Transformers and did not have the title, only the producers name J. J. Abrams  and a release date.

A Theatrical trailer however is much different, a theatrical trailer consists of selected shots that are usually the most exciting, funny or shocking, but trying to keep the reasons a secret as to not show all the spoilers. The shots will never appear in the order that they are in the film, to give you an idea of what is going to happen but not showing you when it will. According to the MPAA, theatrical trailers have to be shown in less than two and a half minutes; however each studio or distributer can exceed this limit once a year if they feel the need to. Another difference is that theatrical trailers show a lot more of the storyline and therefore can make up shots called a 'special shoot,' which is footage specifically created for the trailer, but that is never actually in the film. Theatrical trailers are also different in release dates as they are released a lot closer to the release date, as you don't want to see the story line a lot before it comes out.