ITV’s 2021 advertising revenue might be the highest in its history

ITV has posted strong results for its first nine months of the year in a trading update, with a solid growth in both its media and entertainment and studios businesses. In detail, total revenue was up 28% at £2.381 million and up 8% compared to the pre-pandemic year of 2019. Now, the company expects its full year ad revenue to be the highest in its history, up by 24%.

Media and entertainment revenue was up 26% at £1.594 million with total advertising revenue up 30%. AVOD revenue increased 54%, while ITV Studios revenue was up 32% at £1.193 million, up 6% compared to 2019. Moreover, online viewing grew 39%, even though ITV total viewing time was down 5% compared with last year, which saw a boost in numbers from the Covid-19 lockdown.

“By any standards ITV has had an outstanding nine months. Both our Studios and Media & Entertainment (M&E) businesses have performed very strongly. We are also becoming an increasingly scaled digital business. Our online viewing was up 39% in the nine months, and our monthly active users now stand at 9.6 million, a 22% increase year on year reflecting the focus on our AVOD strategy,”  said Carolyn McCall, CEO of ITV.

“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 added.

“ITV Studios continues to attract and support brilliant creative talent delivering significant growth in the UK and internationally. It 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. Like the rest of our business, ITV Studios is embracing new digital processes with more of our productions being managed remotely, utilising tools such as cloud-based editing. Today’s 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,”  she concluded.