ITV has published its Full Year results this morning, revealing the scale of its investment in streaming platform, ITVX.
The broadcaster saw its total revenue increase by 7% to £4.3bn. However, profits fell 12% to £717m.
Chief Executive, Carolyn McCall explained that this was mainly due to a 1% dip in advertising income and planned expenditure on ITVX.
“The successful execution and delivery of ITVX in Q4 was a major digital milestone. The platform has received a very positive reception from viewers and advertisers alike, with its newly expanded range of original content and a superior user experience engaging more viewers, and lighter viewers, and encouraging them to spend more time with ITV. The user experience and personalisation elements will continue to improve throughout 2023,” she stated.
“As a result of ITV’s deliberate strategic actions and strong execution, ITV has a scaled and expanding global production business, a rapidly growing targeted digital advertising business, a resilient linear TV advertising business and a unique vertically integrated producer broadcaster and streamer model. This means that ITV is now a demonstrably more balanced business which is ideally placed to take advantage of the growing demand for quality content from viewers, broadcasters and streamers and take a larger share of the digital advertising market.”
Even though total advertising revenue (TAR) was down 1%, it was the second highest TAR in the company’s history.
During the period, it further rolled out its self-service programmatic advertising platform, Planet V. It’s now the second largest video ad tech platform in the UK, after Google. 90% of its digital inventory is now sold via the platform.
Its total digital revenues were up 18% to £411m.
Looking ahead to 2023, McCall stated:
“We enter 2023 with strong momentum and are on track to deliver all our 2026 KPI targets1 despite a continuing uncertain macro environment. ITV’s balance sheet is robust enabling us to continue to invest to support our strategy and deliver returns to shareholders.”
