This will include highlights from the Qatar 2022 World Cup, Love Island and I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! Others ITV sports broadcasting which will feature includes coverage of the 2023 Rugby World Cup and the FA Cup.

Advertisers will be able to leverage Twitter’s targeting tools through Twitter Amplify while placing ads alongside ITV’s content offering on the website. Over the course of the partnership, the Twitter Next team will produce a series of activations across ITV’s schedule.

Theo Luke, Senior Director of Global Content Partnerships, Twitter, said: “Both Twitter and ITV are at the heart of so many conversations across the UK, so being able to bring the biggest cultural and sporting moments to users on an even greater scale is incredibly exciting.

Since the start of our partnership with ITV back in 2018, we’ve been incredibly impressed by the creativity of their editorial unit alongside the commercial aptitude and collaboration of their sales teams. Through Twitter Amplify and the addition of Twitter Next activations to this partnership, advertisers will have even more opportunities to engage with the very best of ITV’s programming in even more impactful ways.”

Pathman Ruthirapathy, Digital Partnerships Controller, ITV, commented: “We’re really excited about continuing ITV’s long-standing partnership with Twitter. The Twitter Amplify product will be available on some of the nation’s most loved and talked about shows including the FIFA World Cup, Love Island and I’m A Celeb.

“Over the years, Twitter has been a powerful tool in driving conversations and engaging fans around some of our favourite TV moments. This is a fantastic opportunity for advertisers to reach new audiences and extend their relationship with ITV’s content.”

TikTok’s global ad business already grew by 175% in 2021, according to Insider Intelligence, reaching $3.8B. The company has also forecast that TikTok’s ad revenues will achieve near parity with YouTube by 2024, soaring to $23.58B. The two major online video platforms will, at that point, control a 3.1 per cent share each of the global digital ad market.

According to Insider Intelligence, 51.2% of TikTok’s revenues will come from the U.S. this year, bringing in $6B (with 184.4% year-on-year growth.) The platform will command 2.4% of the U.S. digital ad market. In the UK, TikTok will earn $1.04B in ad revenues this year and control 2.9% of the UK digital ad market. Insider Intelligence predicts that by 2024, ad revenues from the U.S. and UK will reach $11B and $1.98B respectively.

Principal Analyst at Insider Intelligence Debra Aho Williamson, said: “[TikTok] has moved well beyond its roots as a lip-syncing and dancing app; it creates trends and fosters deep connections with creators that keep users engaged, video after video. Advertisers want to reach a passionate, dedicated audience, and TikTok can deliver that.

Another factor that will drive growth in ad spending is TikTok’s unique take on social commerce. It pairs marketers with creators to help content go viral, and that can drive enormous demand for products that advertisers want to promote.”

Movistar Plus+ users will be able to browse and purchase 20,000 Amazon.es products across categories such as decoration, cooking, DIY, lighting and electrical appliances – with the option of fast-delivery.

Adolfo Hernandez, Vice President Global Telco Industry, AWS, said: “We are excited to work with Telefónica to bring our successful collaboration to the next level”.

Telefónica describes the Living App offering as being comprised of “personalised applications integrated into Movistar Plus+” that “offer[s] a new consumer experience through Television”. Movistar Plus+ also recently added Twitter to its Living Apps offering, following the integration of Twitter Moments on Movistar Home in 2019.

Chema Alonso, Chief Data Officer at Telefónica, said: “With the incorporation of Twitter in the Movistar Plus+ catalogue of Living Apps, Telefónica is reiterating its commitment to offer a differentiated, attractive and exclusive entertainment offering to Movistar Fusión customers. We are once again maintaining our innovation and the addition of new formats to continue being technology leaders in the home.”

Javier Pagán, Country Manager for Spain, Twitter, commented: “At Twitter we are committed to finding different and innovative ways to disseminate the platform’s content and to bring to Movistar Plus+ users the best experience of Twitter on television. This new phase in our collaboration allows us to continue being an innovative partner that offers a new channel to content creators through which they can reach a new public and can offer a premium experience.”

The conversation began with a reflection on how the pandemic affected brands and the advertising trade. Patel emphasised the deficit of initial insight which could help brands navigate uncharted territory. He said: “I think the pandemic for many clients was tough, and rightly so. You didn’t know whether to stick or twist. There was little to no insight into how you deal with spending during a crisis.” Freedman highlighted the difficulties facing certain brands, when greater ad spend could not translate into increased sales in the short-term. Automotive manufacturers, for example, faced the dilemma of needing to maintain their brand, but simultaneously, retailers were closed, customers could not test-drive vehicles, and consequently, ad spend would have little effect on car sales. She posed an important question: what do marketers do when they can’t simply spend in order to sell product?

Happily, the plummeting of ad spend appeared to have been a short-term phenomenon. Grimmer referenced the recent WARC report that showed strong recovery for the UK ad trade, with spending on advertising reaching £7.7B in Q2 2021 – an increase of 86.5% from the previous year. He asked the panelists what factors they believed drove this remarkable bounce back. Nasr said that, while spending on Twitter by media buyers in Q2 2020 took a nosedive, the recovery was much quicker than he had anticipated.

One reason for this was brands’ greater access to information, insight, data and established econometric tools. This gave advertisers more confidence to spend, as well as time to test and experiment with advertising strategies in new market conditions. Another factor was the trade’s dawning realisation that there did not appear to be an end to the pandemic in sight, and no one was sure when the global economy would return to a state of normality.

Patel echoed this point, speculating that a greater number of companies understood that constricting their marketing budgets would have long-term detrimental effects on brand health. In the case of Sky Broadband, he said, “We haven’t been on brand for a year, so we knew if we continued, it would be a big problem.” Freedman recalled how the “fear of silence” became felt acutely not only by marketers, but the C-suite, who recognised that while savings could be achieved easily by cutting ad spend, the performance of their brands in the long term might be endangered.

Aside from the fear of silence, Patel explained that ad spend increased partly because the media cash that brands would have usually spent, but had saved instead, was released into the market as the pandemic progressed, and media buyers had access to lower entry points. He also praised marketing teams for building the case that ad spend during a crisis, when other brands are more reluctant to invest, gives initiative-taking brands a disproportionate share of voice in the market.

The view that advertising is an investment and not a cost was perhaps put most emphatically by Stacey, especially in the case of brands who are not only attempting to secure market share, but also to create a market from scratch. She said, “We should be arguing with FDs [Finance Directors] that the amount of money spent on advertising launch should be discounted over a certain amount of years like any CapEx. That’s a job for all of us.”

In October  last year, Nielsen – a data and market measurement firm – released a report estimating that, on average, it takes companies three to five years to recover equity lost because of halted advertising, and long-term revenue can drop 2% for every quarter a brand continues to stay silent.