The first approach is a greater focus on scripted content, with Towler arguing that BVOD (broadcaster VOD/streaming) services are underweight in this department when compared to SVODs (both for current catalogues and upcoming commissions).

She presented figures showing the proportion of UK SVOD and BVOD content catalogues that are scripted. Taken in January 2023 (from the Ampere service Ampere Analytics) these reveal that ITV has the highest proportion of scripted content among UK broadcaster streaming services, at 53%, but this is still lower than all the major SVODs.

The UK SVOD with the lowest proportion of scripted content is NOW, at 57%, while Disney+ leads with 84%. The Ampere Analysis figures show that My5 (the Channel 5 BVOD offer) has 23% scripted content, with All4 (from Channel 4) at 33% and BBC iPlayer at 45%.

Towler’s advice is that while scripted content is more expensive, it has higher engagement and better longevity. To support this, she offered the London audience a graph showing the average relative popularity of scripted vs unscripted titles in the months following release, using an Ampere Analysis Popularity Score that is a measure of relative consumer search activity levels on third-party sources such as Google and Wikipedia. This showed that scripted content begins life significantly more ‘popular’ than unscripted content and then increases that relative advantage dramatically in the months that follow.

The popularity data came from ‘Ampere Analytics, Ampere Commissioning’ (a service within Ampere Analysis) and covered the top 25 scripted titles and top 25 unscripted titles released by BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 for seasons released since 2018.

At launch, scripted content was around five times as popular as unscripted (based on the search activity), but at three months this was closer to 8x as popular, and at nine months it was in the region of 12 times as popular as unscripted.

With the cost of scripted content in mind, Towler demonstrated how the rate of growth for global content spend is slowing, but noted that co-commissions can be used to increase output. This is the second of her strategies to increase broadcaster share of digital viewing time.

She gave figures for the % of broadcaster scripted series that are co-commissions on a quarter-by-quarter basis. These showed regular fluctuations but a general downward trend.

For example, the highest peak for broadcaster scripted series co-commissions since Q2 2022 has been 11%, whereas there were peaks of 17% in Q2 2020 and 14% in Q1 2021. The most recent trough was 8% in Q3 2022, whereas previous troughs were 12% (e.g. Q3/Q4 2020) and 10% (e.g. Q3 2021 and Q1 2022).

Co-commissions are often among broadcasters’ most popular recent shows, Towler told the Connected TV World Summit gathering (once again using Ampere’s Popularity Score, and so based on relative consumer third-party search activity).

A diagram outlined the proportion of Top 50 popular titles in 2022 (in the UK) that were co-commissions (using the Top 50 across BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 – with the data again from ‘Ampere Analytics, Ampere Commissioning’). For all shows in the Top 50 during 2022, one-fifth were co-commissions. If you count only the newer content – the Top 50 shows in 2022 that were also released after 2020 – two-thirds were co-commissions.

“Co-commissions offer a cost-effective opportunity to increase the volume of premium scripted content in broadcasters’ slates,” Towler concluded.

Towler’s third suggestion is that broadcasters should take advantage of the fact that non-exclusive licensing is set to increase – meaning more studio titles will be available to license. She used HBO Max in the USA as an example, where the proportion of the catalogue that is exclusive was 80% in August 2022 but 75% in January 2023.

[The context, of course, is that when major international studios launched their direct-to-consumer ‘+’ services there was a general shift towards studios feeding their own streaming services with their own content – sometimes at the expense of third-party licensing. If studios are licensing more to third-parties again, broadcasters can boost their BVOD offer with the titles that become available.]

Towler also suggested that broadcasters can license their own content to (non-broadcaster) AVOD and FAST services to reach new audiences.

The fourth item on the ‘to-do’ list is to release more digital-first premieres, which Towler described as “key for transitioning viewers to the online platform.” Based on first-run series released in 2022, ITV is leading the way among UK broadcasters for BVOD premieres, with 7% of those first-runs going to the streaming service first. For Channel 4 the figure was 6%, with the BBC at 3%.

As well as getting linear viewers into streaming, first-run digital premieres will help draw in new audiences, she noted. Towler also advised that weekly releases on VOD help retain users and prolong engagement, compared to full-series drops.

The final part of Towler’s five-point plan is a focus on younger viewers. She had a graph showing that Netflix Originals skew younger than content on SVOD in general, and pointed out that these are backed by an aggressive social media strategy “that is key for engaging younger groups.”

Broadcasters could learn from Netflix in this regard. “A successful social media strategy across Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat can help engage this demographic,” Towler advised.

The streaming service will also offer action titles such as Rush, Rambo, and Highlander, and comedies that include Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa and Four Lions. Other titles include Legend, Tinker Tailor Solider Spy, The Imitation Game and Non-Stop. Additionally, Premium subscribers will have access to a catalogue of TV series that includes Hannibal, Years and Years and All the Way Up.

Laura Franses, Director of Content Partnerships, Streaming, ITV, says: “We are thrilled to announce our partnership with STUDIOCANAL PRESENTS. This fantastic collection of films and television series is the perfect addition to ITVX Premium, where subscribers can browse quality content ad-free to their hearts’ content.”

Working alongside in-house teams, Accedo has developed video services for several other platforms and services, including Youview, Freeview, Android TV, Freesat, Roku, Samsung Tizen, Samsung Orsay, and Xbox.

ITVX delivers a mix of live linear content, curated FAST channels and VOD library content, which includes British boxsets from BritBox and content from other partners. The broadcaster says that much of the new content will be streamed on ITVX first, before appearing on ITV’s linear channels months later.

Steve Forde, Director of Product: Core Experience, ITVX, says: “With rapidly changing viewing habits and an increased appetite for free ad-funded content, we wanted to massively scale up our streaming ambitions, which is what we’ve done with ITVX. Accedo has been a trusted partner for years and has helped us deliver a compelling and engaging streaming service which will help us deliver our programmes to as many people as possible in all the ways they want to watch them, while also offering more value to our advertisers.”

Michael Lantz, CEO, Accedo, comments: “I’m thrilled to be supporting ITV with the launch of ITVX, promising more fresh new content than any other British VOD platform. The vast range of different and popular video content, coupled with the choice of AVOD and SVOD tiers, and the different viewing options from FAST channels to video-on-demand, will set a new standard on the market for broadcaster video services.”

“ITV has managed to create a direct link from data to profitability and sustainability, not just for the organisation, but for its partners,” said Izlan. “We use value as a means for prioritisation among many data use cases, as a method for feedback and learning, and as a way to measure success.”

Many areas of the business are said to be improving their use of data: ITV’s own marketing campaign performance, increasing the choice and speed to market of new addressable advertising products, and the empowerment of product experimentation to drive viewer engagement.

Izlan, however, was excited for the next frontier: “We are using data as the connective tissue between all the various touchpoints, or as I like to call it, the ‘viewer value chain’. This means we can start informing and optimising the decisions we make in a much more interconnected way, so we can grow our streaming business. An example of this is data driving content positioning. It enables optimisation and experimentation, and we link that to marketing activity — so how we use data to attract new users as well as re-engaging audiences with first-party data activations across all marketing channels.

“We then link that to the product experience. By using data to personalise experiences on ITVX, we’re giving viewers what they want to see, we’re telling them what they might like to watch next, and driving engagement and time spent on the site. That, in turn, increases the advertising capacity, which we then link to commercial opportunities. It’s how we drive reach, and how we drive more addressable advertising options for advertisers.”

By incorporating everything that Izlan mentioned, ITV has created a feedback loop mechanism to continually optimise its decision making and grow its streaming business.

“It’s been a journey to get here. Over the last 18 months we’ve kept our procurement team busy. We’ve implemented a new cloud data platform, clean room technology, and a customer data platform. All that is coming together to power Flex, ITV’s first data-driven platform that offers insights and the activation of data, ” Izlan revealed.

She also told the London audience that by introducing these new ventures, ITV has recognised that digital transformation is not only about the technology. “It’s also about people and process”, she said. “We knew we needed an enterprise-wide cultural shift for this to deliver the value we want for the business. So, in parallel, the data team is transforming the operating model by moving away from centralised, back-office style data functions to a fully decentralised model where we are embedding data capabilities into the business. These align with each business area’s way of working and strategic objectives.

“We’re allowing our users to self-serve by building data, training that data, then releasing it. We want to democratise data across the business, so the data activation team sits in the same place as the business positions at all levels of the organisation. ITV knows that developing data capabilities and culture are powerful drivers of value. It also makes advertising better for end consumers and a more profitable and strategic investment for brands wanting more enduring business outcomes.”

She said: “[Lower ad loads] is a good thing. With ITV Hub, we had 1,500 hours of content on the service, so the inventory was more limited. Whereas with ITVX we are going to have a lot more inventory because we’re launching with 9,000 hours of content, all ad-funded.”

McCall believes the larger range of content will boost viewer’s dwell time in the service. She also said that, coupled with ITV’s significant amount of first-party data, advertisers will have the opportunity to access more targetable audiences through Planet V (the company’s digital programmatic platform.) She continued: “I think what’s really important is that we can target people in a very granular way. We’re going to have something like 20,000 targetable audiences.”

McCall believes ITV is better than anyone else at giving advertisers mass simultaneous reach through its traditional broadcast channels in combination with its streaming services. However, the broadcaster also recognises that brands are not always looking for mass simultaneous reach, but only to extend reach to specific targeted audiences. She believes both broadcast and streaming can play important parts in the marketing mix.

“Porsche is a good example,” she said, “They don’t want mass simultaneous reach. They want men of a certain age who can afford a Porsche and are maybe aspirational and they know exactly – through data matching – how they want to target them. They can use ITVX to do that.”

The combination of AdLabs – ITV’s advertising solutions arm – and Planet V is producing new opportunities for advertisers to plan their media in novel ways, according to McCall. The company is currently running a pilot scheme for a new ad product which will allow advertisers to plan ads according to the weather in the UK, changing automatically based on advertiser preferences and weather conditions in the country.

She also remarked that no funding for linear programming was taken away to fund the launch and development of ITVX. Specifically, an extra £160m was put towards ITVX’s content, and £140m for its data and analytics.

McCall also made clear that the company does not see Netflix as a competitor in the streaming space. She stressed: “We are not a global streaming platform and we never will be.”

She noted that ITV is primarily a public service broadcaster with local and national commissioning and programming. It’s UK focus means that ITVX can be complementary to Netflix (or other global streamers) rather than in competition with them. More broadly she views competitors to ITV as “anyone that takes eyeballs away”, such as Facebook, Google and TikTok, rather than Netflix and Disney+.

Whip Media argues that content programmers in the FAST space do not currently have visibility into title-level performance across multiple digital platforms. This creates data inefficiencies for FAST networks, and impedes the ability to make strategic content acquisition decisions, according to the company.

To address this issue, Whip Media leverages its data aggregation capabilities, mapping FAST network’s performance data to both its linear schedules and internal metadata, creating an automated performance tracking solution.

Paul Hastings, Whip Media’s SVP of Global Sales, said: “Our team couldn’t be more excited to help ITV Studios – one of the premier production and distribution companies in the world – track the performance of its series across a rapidly growing number of platforms. As content distribution continues to become increasingly stratified and difficult to manage, it’s imperative for entertainment companies to streamline how their data is analyzed and processed. Whip Media’s platform will help ITV Studios accomplish that goal – allowing it to focus on what it does best, which is churning out great series for millions of viewers to enjoy.”

Graham Haigh, EVP Business Development & Digital Distribution at ITV Studios, commented: “We’re very pleased to be partnering with the Whip Media team and utilise their expertise in this space. The Performance Track tool and the data it will unlock is a key component of ITV Studios’ overall strategy to expand and grow our digital business across AVOD, FAST and other digital platforms and deepen our understanding of how our content engages with viewers across multiple platforms and territories.”

Rhys McLachlan, Director of Advanced Advertising at ITV, gives the example of advertising alongside food-related content: “If you are a food advertiser, you’re not just going to advertise beside food programmes. We have 24 food-related programmes but food, or meal times, as they appear across the entirety of ITV’s programming estate, are actually represented thousands of times. So we are using machine learning to understand when those meal times occur and what’s been served [in the content] – is it pizza? Burgers? Spaghetti Bolognese?

“We’re able to create advertising breaks for advertisers adjacent to that concept, unlocking what we’re calling ‘next generation contextual targeting’ using metadata already inherent in the content we have.”

The new product has been tested in market for six months and  ITV is “delighted” with the feedback it has received about its performance.

McLachlan revealed that Planet V has onboarded almost 1,300 users [meaning TV buyers], with most of them being monthly active users. The broadcaster has converted the entirety of its digital video billing system to Planet V, and does not take direct orders [for digital video] anymore. To illustrate the range of businesses using the platform to advertise across ITV’s programming he brings up several recent examples, including a chain of tanning salons across Stockport, solicitors firms in Birmingham, and a glass fitting company in Glasgow looking to amplify its proposition by advertising to customers within a certain drive time of where it is located. He says: “Everything is going through Planet V. We have thousands and thousands of advertisers – our run rate is ridiculous – and we’re driving into new markets as well.”

Speaking briefly about ITVX – ITV’s forthcoming streaming service – McLachlan believes the new offer will “revolutionise” the broadcaster’s business. We’re fully re-imagining ITV’s streaming proposition and it’s going to knock your socks off.”

McLachlan believes that broadcasters are at risk of collectively failing if they cannot compete with digital native businesses that have innovation “hard-coded” into their DNA. He argues that broadcasters do not compete with each other so much anymore, but with companies like Amazon, Google, Facebook and TikTok that have codified “disruption, agility and a hacker mindset” into developing their advertising products.

He comments: “They could move much faster. They had much greater dexterity, and were able to work with greater confidence around risk – around unknowns.” According to McLachlan, until recently ITV had not succeeded in significantly tapping into the discretionary budgets allocated to advertisers to spend on innovative ad products, but over the last two years the company has been “quietly moving innovation into the beating heart” of its business.

He notes that around September 2021, the broadcaster had put into place a process which allowed it to codify its “innovation journey” into an ad labs proposition, developing a group of teams that have the designated responsibilities of delivering innovation across the entirety of the company’s estate. The broadcaster has been reviewing its systems, data, processes and tech stack, and developed a set of concepts that went through a rigorous assessment phase – from ideation through to concept, then to pilot and on to a beta protocol that clients can participate in.

McLachlan says: “The world is crying out for more progressive solutions that allow broadcasters, advertisers and agencies to avail of the richness of the ecosystem in which we now operate.

“This is how we win. This is how we re-frame what TV is about when the ecosystem is changing so quickly and other businesses are trying to muscle in on our territory. This is how we fight back, and we’ll be more effective if we do it together.”

The first sub-segment Radcliffe outlined is ‘Everyday Event-ers’. He said: “They prefer entertainment to drama. They have slightly lower VOD usage and are younger. They want plenty of choice in a content offering and love the big tent-pole shows that ITV delivers.”

Another sub-segment – ‘Socialisers’ – are characterised by viewing VOD as their primary TV destination. This group tends to enjoy shows which are currently trending and serve as “social fuel”, such as The Only Way Is Essex, Real Housewives, and large events like the Brits UK music award ceremony. The ‘Armchair Explorer’ sub-segment are viewers who tend to be more traditional in their ideals and values, and slower to adopt new media behaviours. While they generally have lower tech literacy, Radcliffe said they are “beginning to move into VOD at speed now.” This sub-segment also has a preference for UK content over U.S. content.

The final group Radcliffe outlined are ‘Savvy Streamers’ who tend to be tech-savvy and more open to trying new things and experimenting with their TV consumption. They also have access to a wealth of choice between services but want “quality rather than quantity.”

Radcliffe said: “What we’re doing now is mapping all of the content onto these segments to make sure we can really drive growth on ITVX. All throughout this process, we’ve been listening to viewers and getting feedback. The response has been really positive.”

He also said that the broadcaster would invest £160 million incrementally into content to “super-charge” ITVX, and that more “free and fresh” content would be added to the service on a weekly basis than on any other British streamer.

ITVX will launch with 20 new FAST channels. Additionally, live channels will be included “front and centre” on the service. According to Radcliffe, three million households in the UK only watch TV via broadcaster apps on the their connected TVs. He said: “Live is still incredibly important. Whether you stream or watch in linear – live TV matters. So, alongside our Britishness, the inclusion of live TV will be a significant differentiator between ITVX and U.S. streamers.

“Just for example, during the Euros [UEFA European Championship football competition] last summer, we had over two million viewers streaming matches on ITV Hub. Viewers are increasingly choosing to watch live TV in an online environment.”

The service’s on demand offering will include 15,000 hours of content at launch, with catch-up viewing enhanced by series stacks, newly acquired boxsets, and exclusive commissions. Radcliffe noted that the streamer will be on-boarding ITV’s content partners to “give more volume and breadth of content to our viewers”, and that it would represent “a real step change” from the broadcaster’s approach with ITV Hub.

Radcliffe mentioned that the three streaming brands currently owned by the broadcaster – ITV Hub, ITV Hub+ (an ad-free SVOD tier of the service) and the SVOD Britbox – will be integrated into ITVX. ITV Hub saw 25 million people use the service last year, with over 600 million streaming hours logged, according to Radcliffe. The company currently has 1.2 million subscribers across its SVOD services and, importantly, there is “very little [subscriber] duplication.”

He also noted that ITVX will be offered as a free ad-supported service with the option of a paid SVOD tier. Radcliffe remarked: “We think ‘free’ is a very important message, particularly at a time when consumer confidence is as it is and the market is as it is.”

Radcliffe joked that the branding process for any new service is a “thankless job” but research showed ‘ITVX’ to be the clear winner among possible names for the streamer. He said: “Its got ITV in the name, which gives you a sense of trust, familiarity and quality, but also it’s going to have a whole load more as part of it as well. It will give us the opportunity to not only super-serve existing viewers, but bring in a whole load of new viewers on a regular basis. That’s where X comes in – it’s the ITV you would expect and the ITV you wouldn’t expect as well.”

In advertising, we have long known this to be true. The media environments best able to produce metrics and establish effectiveness invariably attract those in charge of managing spend.

Just look at the rise of digital over the last two decades. The decline of traditional media, such as print and TV, directly correlates with the rise of digital channels, and the growing ubiquity of smartphones. Marketers, faced with tightening budgets, want to be able to clearly demonstrate ROI.

But how we measure things in digital is changing. As privacy rises up the agenda, and tech giants respond to new consumer concerns, the world is moving away from behavioural targeting through third-party cookies.

Within this change lies opportunity for advertisers – as ITV’s results earlier this year illustrate.

CTV to the Factor of X

In March, ITV posted its largest advertising revenue growth in its history. The broadcaster saw advertising revenues rise by 24% YoY to reach almost £2bn – with its AVOD revenue up by a significant 41%.

“Our ’More Than TV’ strategy, sets ITV up for digital acceleration,” said Chief Executive Officer Carolyn McCall. “Our strong balance sheet and cash flows enable us to invest behind our strategy to build a more valuable digital media and entertainment company and deliver returns to shareholders.”

Or in other words, building on its success in CTV thus far, ITV is pressing its advantage and launching ITVX later this year, a new streaming service that will premiere new content before traditional linear broadcast. And they aren’t the only ones keeping busy.

There is a lot of movement in the UK’s CTV space: platforms like Pluto TV are running big outdoor campaigns around London – and brands like Disney are considering a move into AVOD.

The wider socio-economic context adds credence to these moves. As inflation bites and the cost of living rises, the pressure on household finances is growing. This could see consumers opt to reduce their active subscriptions and move from SVOD to AVOD in order to save money.

Understanding households

The UK is still behind countries like the U.S. when it comes to CTV and CTV advertising; however with companies like ITV creating more opportunities for streaming content and advertising on its platforms, CTV has the potential to be fast-growing across UK households.

Modern audiences exhibit both the habits and the devices required for effective CTV advertising. Over 78% of European audiences regularly watch CTV – and 42% of households now have two or more Smart TVs. In the UK, 89% of consumers use a streaming service at least once a week and 74% use AVOD at least once a week.

These figures are naturally attracting advertisers. CTV benefits from being driven by real-time data, providing an opportunity for precise targeting at the local, household or even device level.

Brands aren’t going back to appealing to undefined audiences en-masse. Login and authentication steps empower advertisers to target individual viewers, while digital attribution helps identify the link between ad exposure and engagement.

And this data melds with other first-party data sources. Marketers can use their own customer relationship management (CRM) and transaction records, online data such as website visits and available digital segments indicating, for example, kids at home or occupation type, to identify when and where to reach their desired audience.

The media landscape is changing. But people aren’t. As Drucker noted long ago, the stuff that gets measured, gets managed. As CTV offers consumers increasingly appealing AVOD options, and offers brands the detailed metrics they crave through household targeting, more interest and investment will naturally flow through the channel.

ITVX will replace ITV Hub and ITV Hub+. The plan is for ITVX to launch in time for the FIFA World Cup finals, which start in late November. ITV wants to double the number of monthly active users (MAU) on ITV streaming over the next five years, but another key KPI is total consumption, with Kelly Williams, Managing Director, Commercial, at ITV, looking to “double or even triple consumption over the next five years.”

ITVX is effectively a new build streaming service – it is based on completely new technical and UX architecture, underpinned by “a significantly enhanced data capability.” Greater personalisation will be one of the most obvious consumer-facing benefits. Deep Bagchee, Chief Product Officer at ITV, promised a destination for discovering content that includes a much richer visual experience. “The more you watch, the more accurately ITVX gets to know you so we can personalise the product experience,” he explained. Children can create their own viewing profiles, in an example of the personalised UX features.

There is scope for dedicated show/events spaces within the new user interface and the FIFA World Cup Quatar will provide an early example of what is possible, where ITVX viewers will find World Cup related content including interview highlights and companion shows. The World Cup will also be the perfect introduction for a service that is partly designed to bring lighter TV viewers to ITV and then persuade them to stay. In the words of Williams: “People will come in and think, ‘This is a better and stronger service proposition’.”

The launch of ITVX is part of ITV’s previously announced strategy to increase its share of on-demand and streamed viewing while maintaining super-scale live audiences for advertisers – with the linear broadcast channels still central to the share-of-time and share-of-ad-revenue ambitions. The company confirmed: “It has become increasingly clear this year that live channels are incredibly important, whether people are watching broadcast or streaming versions. That will be a significant differentiator [for ITV and ITVX]. Viewers are increasingly choosing to watch live TV in a streaming environment,” said Williams during a briefing to media buyers.

ITV has promised an enhanced live experience via ITVX that includes better discoverability – partly driven by better search engine optimisation and by social sharing of big, live television moments.

Chris Goldson, Director of Commercial Marketing and Pitch Development at ITV, added: “We will be doubling down on live streaming as a differentiator, harnessing daytime, soaps, news and sport to ensure we continue to be the biggest game in town for those valuable mass audiences.”

The company will also leverage its own deep library of programming to feed series-stacking and boxset binge-viewing habits in the VOD space, and ITVX will provide a casual linear zapping experience for streamers via FAST channels (as well as standard linear channels). The FAST channels will be a themed curation of shows and other content, played out on a linear schedule. ITV says the common denominator for what goes in one of its FAST channels could be genre, an actor (e.g. you could have a David Tennant themed channel), cultural moments and calendar events, or they can be based upon a specific programme – with The Only Way is Essex, The Chase and Real Housewives offered as examples.

“FAST channels are big in the U.S., and we think we can be very strong in this space,” Williams declared. There will be 20 FAST channels on ITVX at launch and the broadcaster likened their curation to ITV putting together a Spotify playlist that they think their viewers will love. The FAST channels can be added and removed with ease, based on viewer demand, harnessing digital data smarts. The broadcaster aims to introduce a new FAST channel to ITVX every week.

ITV has also announced a significant increase in content investment, taking spend from £1.1 billion to £1.35bn per year, with streaming prioritised. The extra money will be used to attract harder-to-reach, [for TV advertisers] lighter TV viewers to the broadcaster. In total, ITVX will have 15,000 hours of content at launch versus the 4,000 available on ITV Hub today. ITV will welcome third-party content into ITVX. All of this justifies the broadcaster’s assertion that ITVX will be a streaming destination [rather than a catch-up service].

Goldson talked about bonfires and fireworks within the programme mix, with ‘bonfires’ being the always-on programming that keeps people coming back, underpinned by a wider choice of on-demand titles. ‘Fireworks’ are the programming launches, exclusives, series drops and “special moments” that create a big bang. The ‘bonfires’ will include a collection of feature films, with 50 films available on the service at any one time, regularly refreshed. ITV named some of its partners, including Warner Bros, Disney, NBCU, Sony and StudioCanal. “We expect to show 500 films for free in the first year alone,” Goldson revealed. “We will have extremely well-known franchises in their entirety, for free, in one place for the first time.”

ITV used the launch event to stress that ITVX is first-and-foremost an ad-funded service and that ITV’s future is all about free-to-air television. Because the service will include an ad-free subscription tier under the same roof – bringing what is currently ITV Hub+ into the same integrated platform – and because ITV at the same time announced that a lot of content will premiere in ITVX up to nine months before it goes onto broadcast linear TV, some assumptions were made that ITV was shifting further into the paid domain as a strategic objective. In fact, as you can read here, the new exclusive streaming windows apply to the free-to-view tier on ITVX as well as the paid version. The strategic shift embedded in the new windowing is not from free to paid, but from broadcast towards streaming.

One of the first ITVX exclusive premieres, this autumn, will be the flagship four-part drama Litvinenko, with David Tennant playing the lead role of Alexander Litvinenko, the former Russian Federal Security Services and KGB officer who was murdered in November 2006 by polonium poisoning, creating a security and diplomatic crisis.

As part of the new windowing strategy, every episode of a new series will also be dropped onto ITVX as soon as the programme airs on ITV broadcast television (if it is not premiered ahead of broadcast). “Viewers could watch all the remaining episodes that same night,” Goldson pointed out. “We tested this with five dramas last year and it brought in new viewers and added incremental viewing, so we are going to do it with 20 series in Year One of ITVX.”

Speaking about the strategy to give ITVX a 6-9 month exclusivity period on a significant amount of drama and documentary programming, Goldson said this content will receive a second surge of viewing when it is finally unleashed on the linear broadcast channels. “This is an opportunity to bring in new and younger audiences with refreshingly different types of ITV content as we are unshackled from the linear schedule,” he declared. Streaming-first Sci-Fi, Indie and Documentary programming is expected to bring new viewers to ITV.

The paid tier on ITVX will include content that is exclusive to subscribers plus the full BritBox experience including programming from BBC, Channel 4 and Channel 5 (the UK’s other major ‘terrestrial’ broadcasters).

Rhys McLachlan, Director of Advanced Advertising at ITV, doubled down on the message that ITV is all about ad-supported television. “ITVX is an AVOD-led proposition; it is advertising funded front-and-centre. There is a subscription tier, with ITV Hub+ and BritBox being integrated into ITVX, but if you de-duplicate those subscribers, we have about one million subscribers. We have modest ambitions in this [subscription] area.”

Emphasising this point, Williams said ITV is “perhaps looking to double the subscription base over five years.” He declared: “It is not true that we are looking to take on Netflix and Amazon – this is about being a premium AVOD service. The premium tier is a small add-on.”

It is worth noting that ITV Hub+ – the current ad-free subscription streaming offer from ITV – is only ad-free for on-demand content, with live programming still carrying ads. This model will be carried over to the subscription ad-free tier of ITVX.

Speaking to advertisers and agencies during the ITVX briefing, Kate Waters, Director of Client Strategy at ITV, emphasised that ITV serves the whole country and [for the purposes of market research] the broadcaster has now defined the national audience into various viewing types, including those primarily looking for tentpole and flagship live entertainment and drama, and those described as VOD-first consumers who are looking for content that drives social conversation, and who skew younger. Another group are later adopters of digital technology who tend to also focus on British content, and yet another group are the streaming subscription stackers who are looking for quality rather than quantity of content. ITVX is designed to serve everyone.

McLachlan said ITVX will increase ITV’s addressable market, increasing the breadth and diversity of the audience as well as encouraging more people to watch more content. ITVX advertising will be 100% traded through Planet V. Advertisers can expect all the targeting options they are used to within ITV Hub, but McLachlan promised that targeting will also be turbo-charged, with more permutations possible by taking content multiplied by audience multiplied by context.

ITV AdLabs, ITV’s new strategy, tech and process innovation initiative, is currently developing an ACR-based solution that will read programme metadata to understand what is happening inside shows or films not just at programme-level but at scene-level. McLachlan gave the example of knowing when it is family mealtime within a show. It is this kind of context that he is referring to in the expanded content-audience-context planning options.

ITVX targeting is backed by privacy compliant data from ITV’s 33 million registered streaming users and ITV will use the new service launch to actively engage with consumers to understand more about them. This will be achieved using a fair exchange of value in a GDPR compliant way.

Asked about the likely ad loads on ITVX, McLachlan said there are no hard-and-fast rules, “and as the proposition grows, we will be much more agile in how we schedule breaks.”

In terms of app distribution, the expectation is that ITVX will appear on any platform where you find ITV Hub today.

Photo: ITV has concluded a wide ranging ITVX content deal with WarnerMedia International Television Distribution for programmes including UK premieres of The Sex Lives of College Girls (featured) and All American. More third-party content deals like this are anticipated.

More around this subject

Interested in the future of free-to-view television, the evolution of content strategies (including windowing) and (subscription and ad-supported) streaming strategies? Then check out Connected TV World Summit in May, which also has three sessions dedicated to advanced TV advertising. Full details here.