U.K. TV giant ITV said its third-quarter total advertising revenue jumped 32 percent after a 29 percent increase in the first half of 2021.
In its financial update on Wednesday, the company also reported an increase in total revenue for the first nine months of the year, including at production arm ITV Studios, and provided an update on its streaming business.
The company touted that its total external revenue for the first nine months of 2021 hit 2.38 billion pounds ($3.22 billion) rose 28 percent over the same period in 2020 and 8 percent over the comparable period in pre-coronavirus pandemic year 2019.
“Total advertising revenue (TAR) for 2021 is expected to be the highest in ITV’s history,” up around 24 percent, the company said, citing “the re-opening of the economy and the delivery of the commercial strategy to reinforce the power of mass simultaneous reach and build a strong addressable advertising platform.” TAR rose 30 percent for the nine months to the end of September, with July up 68 percent, August up 24 percent and September up 16 percent, the firm said.
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ITV’s fourth-quarter total advertising revenue is expected to be up 11 percent-13 percent “against strong comparatives in 2020, with October up 17 percent, and we forecast November to be up around 12 percent and December to be up between 5 percent and 10 percent,” the company said.
ITV’s previous full-year ad revenue record was established in 2015 when it recorded nearly 1.86 billion pounds. This year, it could hit around 1.95 billion pounds ($2.63 billion), management said on Wednesday.
ITV, led by CEO Carolyn McCall, also disclosed that quarterly revenue for its production arm ITV Studios rose 32 percent in the first nine months of 2021 to 1.19 billion pounds ($1.61 billion). The unit has produced “the biggest dramas of the year so far on both the BBC and ITV and revenue from streamers globally is growing very strongly,” McCall said on Wednesday. The company touted the likes of Vigil for BBC One, Physical for Apple TV+, The Long Call and Endeavour for ITV, Ten Year Old Tom for HBO Max, Snowpiercer season 2 for Netflix and Love Island in the U.K. for ITV and in the U.S. for CBS.
The company said ITV Studios was on track for a strong year, “mitigating many of the challenges from COVID-19 and taking advantage of the strong global demand for content.” It highlighted a “strong pipeline of scripted and unscripted programs going into the fourth quarter and 2022 as we further diversify the business by genre, by geography and by customer.”
Among its pipeline of scripted shows, it noted Let the Right One In, Snowpiercer season 4 and Physical season 2 in the U.S., along with The Outlaws and A Spy Among Friends in the U.K. ITV also mentioned such unscripted programs as Rat in the Kitchen, My Mom Your Dad and Hell’s Kitchen in the U.S., as well as Love Island Australia.
ITV didn’t provide a latest subscriber figure for streaming service BritBox, but said its U.K service has continued to “perform well and on plan,” while BritBox International was “delivering strong growth in subscriptions across the U.S., Canada and Australia and successfully launched in South Africa in August with more markets expected in 2022.”
Management on Wednesday also lauded the overall performance of the company this year. “By any standards ITV has had an outstanding nine months,” McCall said.
“We are becoming an increasingly scaled digital business,” she added. “Our online viewing was up 39 percent in the nine months which … helped our video on demand advertising revenue to climb 54 percent. Our monthly active users now stand at 9.6 million, a 22 percent increase year on year reflecting the focus on our AVOD strategy.”
The ITV CEO also summarized: “With the combination of broadcast and ITV Hub’s mass simultaneous reach, our brand-safe addressable advertising product and the strong economy, 2021 looks set to have the highest advertising revenue in ITV’s history, despite the lockdown in the first quarter.”
McCall concluded that the latest results “further illustrate that ITV has successfully completed the first phase of its More Than TV strategy and is accelerating the second phase of digital transformation as we evolve our products, user experiences and ways of working.”
