ITV Revenues Slip Amid Weakened Ad Market

Overall revenues at ITV for Q1 fell by 4 percent to £743 million ($966 million), with ad revenues down by 7 percent in the period.

The British media group noted that the first half of the year will see it being impacted by economic and political uncertainty in the U.K., which is affecting the ad market—overall ad revenues in the first six months of the year are expected to be down by 6 percent—a difficult previous-year comparison due to the lack of the World Cup, launch costs related to BritBox and the timing of ITV Studios deliveries.

“ITV’s performance in the first three months was very much as we expected,” said Chief Executive Carolyn McCall.

Broadcast and online revenues were down 7 percent to £489 million ($636 million), while ITV Studios was up by 1 percent to £385 million ($500 million).

“Viewing has continued to be strong with ITV Family share of viewing up 4 percent and a 16 percent increase in viewing hours on the ITV Hub,” McCall noted. “ITV Studios delivered 1 percent growth in organic revenues. We remain confident that we will deliver good organic revenue growth in ITV Studios over the full year and have already secured over £120 million more revenue for 2019 than at the same time last year.”

McCall continued, “We are making good progress in delivering the strategy and we expect to launch BritBox in the second half of the year. We have also concluded an agreement with a leading ad tech provider, Amobee, which will enable us to deliver programmatic addressable advertising around our premium video inventory on the ITV Hub. This means ITV can offer the best of both worlds at scale—mass simultaneous reach across linear channels where we delivered 100 percent of all commercial audiences over 5 million, alongside targeted, data-driven addressable advertising in a brand safe environment on the ITV Hub.

“We remain very focused on delivering in the areas we can control, with our investment and cost-saving programs on track, and we are actively mitigating the factors outside the company’s control. We have a solid balance sheet which enables us to make the right decisions to build a robust and growing business and deliver returns to shareholders in line with our guidance.”