Advanced Television

Addressable advertising for ITV Hub

April 4, 2019

By Colin Mann

UK commercial PSB ITV has signed an exclusive UK and Ireland licensing agreement with digital advertising technology company Amobee for end-to-end programmatic buying and selling of premium video inventory on ITV’s premium VoD service, the ITV Hub.

This will enable ITV to launch a new, fully-programmatic, premium advanced advertising platform, built using Amobee’s advertising technology which allows advertisers complete control over the purchasing of their campaigns across the ITV Hub.

“This agreement enables ITV to respond to our customers’ needs of frictionless targeted advertising in a brand safe environment complementing what they currently do on our channels,” commented Carolyn McCall, CEO, ITV.

“It accelerates the strategic development of our VoD advertising capabilities and provides a technology platform that will enable ITV to create an industry standard for VoD to match the established system for linear advertising.”

Speaking to the Broadcasting  Press Guild on March 28th, McCall revealed that a programmatic advertising deal with a technology partner for its VoD service was “very close” to being signed.

“This brings the functionality that’s previously only been available on large social platforms to the ITV Hub – offering addressable, targeted advertising around premium content,” added Kelly Williams, Managing Director, Commercial, ITV. “Our exclusive licence to use Amobee’s technology and develop it to best serve the needs of advertisers enables us to create our own platform, and as that rolls out, we’ll look to invite other broadcasters to join.”

“ITV is working to deliver the most ambitious programmatic video initiative in the United Kingdom, a testament to their innovative, forward-thinking leadership among broadcasters and commitment to invest in new video technology,” says Kim Perell, CEO of Amobee. “Amobee’s strategic partnership with ITV will unlock the value of advanced TV for both ITV and their customers across the United Kingdom.”

As part of the partnership, Amobee and ITV will collaborate to develop the industry’s next-generation solutions for the convergence of TV and digital media across all devices. Under the deal, ITV will consolidate programmatic access to its media with the Amobee demand-side platform.

The ITV Hub has more than 28 million subscribers, with over 79 per cent of all 16-34-year-olds in the UK registered on the service, and saw a 32 per cent increase in viewing in the past year with over 446 million hours of online viewing. The ITV Hub had its biggest ever day on July 3rd, 2018, when, thanks to the World Cup and Love Island, the Hub received a record 9.7 million simulcast (live) and catch-up requests. England’s semi-final against Croatia saw 4.3 million simulcast requests, the Hub’s biggest ever number for live programming.

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