ITV is positioning itself as an “engine for growth” with the launch of a suite of advertising tools, unveiled at its Showcase in Manchester tonight (12 June) – the broadcaster’s biggest advertiser event outside London.
Presented to an audience of more than 500 brands and agencies to coincide with ITV’s 70th year celebrations, the tools include a new interactive ad format known as Lead Gen Ads. The technology enables advertisers to capture interest and qualified leads directly from a TV ad on streaming service ITVX.
Viewers convey their interest in the ad via their remote, consenting for ITV to share their details with the advertiser via a screen pre-populated with their email address – provided during their ITVX account registration.
ITV is positioning itself as an “engine for growth” with the launch of a suite of advertising tools, unveiled at its Showcase in Manchester tonight (12 June) – the broadcaster’s biggest advertiser event outside London.
Presented to an audience of more than 500 brands and agencies to coincide with ITV’s 70th year celebrations, the tools include a new interactive ad format known as Lead Gen Ads. The technology enables advertisers to capture interest and qualified leads directly from a TV ad on streaming service ITVX.
Viewers convey their interest in the ad via their remote, consenting for ITV to share their details with the advertiser via a screen pre-populated with their email address – provided during their ITVX account registration.
The intention is to create a “light-touch interaction” that does not disrupt the viewing experience. Currently a limited number of advertisers are taking part in the beta testing, with several pilot programmes on the horizon.
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The broadcaster also announced ITV YouTube Affinities, a new means of targeting supported by brand lift studies designed to measure impact. The new format enables brands to target “highly relevant” audiences according to their interests.
The technology builds on the distribution and commercial partnership ITV and YouTube signed in December. The broadcaster joined YouTube’s partner programme, making hundreds of hours of ITV programmes available to viewers on the platform.
Lastly, ITV unveiled Outcomes Planner, a planning tool which allows SMEs to forecast short-term metrics, such as web traffic, to support the business case for TV investment.
Based on 750 studies, the free tool is aimed at SMEs starting out advertising on TV. The tech allows marketers to predict their campaign outcomes based on different scenarios, such as budget size, brand size, campaign length and seasonality.
The new tools are aimed at delivering “exceptional value” from TV ad spend, explains ITV business development director, Jason Spencer.
“For its 70-year history brands and businesses have been ‘built with ITV’ – we are the media multiplier and the engine for growth,” he says.
“ITV Showcase is a key event for us to both demonstrate and celebrate that process with recent successes and to look at what’s coming next by unveiling new opportunities to hundreds of advertisers.”
Tech developments
The Outcomes Planner builds on ITV’s investment over the past three years in tools such as Addressable Lift, piloted in 2023 as a full-funnel measurement programme across brand lift, site lift and sales lift for campaigns at a household level. 2023 also saw the launch of TV Auction Boost, a scientific study carried out in association with Omnicom Media Group and Percept, analysing how broadcast advertising influences paid search activity.
ITV joined forces with Sky and Channel 4 in September on the proof of concept launch of joint measurement tool Lantern, aimed at providing advertisers with a means of quantifying TV’s effect on short-term performance metrics such as search queries, web traffic, social media engagement and conversion.
Last September also saw the launch of two AI-generated TV ads for small businesses, part of ITV’s push to remove the barriers to entry for new-to-TV brands by creating “high-quality” ads for an “accessible cost”.
The first brands to debut the generative AI ads were Northern Irish furniture store Sheepbridge Interiors and Swansea-based travel company Travel House, the latter which appeared on ITV1 and ITVX in the ITV Wales region.
The ads were developed using licensed generative AI tools for image and video creation, alongside professional voiceover artists. ITV’s in-house team currently makes over 1,000 ads a year for more than 200 new-to-TV brands.
In addition, the broadcaster has been ramping up its offering for FMCG brands. In April, ITV unveiled Proximity Shopper, an addressable ad offering providing increased targeting and insights for FMCG brands via self-serve platform Planet V.
Trialled with the likes of toilet paper challenger Who Gives A Crap, Proximity Shopper helps brands target their ad campaigns geographically by identifying optimal postcodes using sales data from all major supermarkets, convenience stores and service stations nationwide, supplied by partner market research firm Circana.
The extended suite of ad tools builds on another successful quarter for digital ad revenue. Reporting its first quarter trading update in May, the broadcaster saw digital ad revenues rise 15% in the three months to 31 March.
ITV Studios’ total digital revenue rose 10% to £133m during the first quarter. Total advertising revenue fell to £423m, down 2% on 2024 when the broadcaster benefitted from “substantial advertising revenues” driven by last year’s men’s Euros.
