On Tuesday 21st November, the advertising industry came together for the fifth instalment of the ITV Palooza.
In a brand new venue, the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, AJ Odudu and Tom Allen hosted a night of new announcements, programming previews, and of course plenty of stardust.
If you weren't able to join us, or need a recap, here’s the highlights.
ITVX, one year on
A year after launching ITVX to the same audience, ITV CEO Dame Carolyn McCall, reflected on the success of the past 12 months. Highlights included the platform hitting 2.6 billion streams, more users than ever watching for longer, and picking up Best On-Demand Service at the Edinburgh TV Festival. Check out a deep dive into the first year.
She thanked advertisers for their ongoing support.
Commercial and media partners are central to what makes ITV special. Clearly we recognise the market is tough for everyone, but what’s also clear is that when we work together amazing things happen.Dame Carolyn McCall, CEO, ITV
Supporting brands to get talking about mental health
Building on the success of Britain Get Talking, we announced a new initiative to encourage brands to use their influence to help combat the acute mental health crisis in the UK.
The ITV Head First Award will be judged by a panel of industry experts with a total prize fund of £2m of airtime for the brands that best champion the importance of taking steps towards better mental health and wellbeing. Find out more.
The triple threat of brand building
ITV has always been able to put advertising in front of millions every day in a brand safe and trusted environment. ITV Managing Director, Commercial, Kelly Williams and Deputy Managing Director, Commercial, Simon Daglish shared how, on top of mass reach, ITV can build brands in three key ways.
Creativity
We’ve helped brands like eBay, Boots, Heineken and Abbott Lyon to smash business targets and change cultural perceptions.
These brands were successful because they leveraged the emotional connection ITV forges with its audience through its content. To bring this opportunity to even more advertisers, we have now launched ITV’s Branded Entertainment Studio. BE Studio is a new, full service creative studio that builds those emotional connections through programming. Find out more.
Addressability at scale
The future of TV advertising is addressable. Not only is all viewing to ITVX addressable, but in the past few months we’ve introduced addressability on linear. This combination of ITVX and our growing linear offering, means we’ve built a significant addressable proposition - with Planet V acting as the front door to those capabilities. Planet V 2.0 arrived in October and is fast becoming the gateway to buying television. STV has been on the platform since January, and Sky has just gone live. Other broadcasters are joining soon.
AdLabs continues to deliver innovative ad solutions such as Automated Contextual Targeting which gives brands the power to place advertising around relevant content moments, moods and objects. Looking for food content? While we have 800 episodes of food programming, our tech has identified 2,500 episodes where food, cooking or eating takes place - ready for your contextual content.
And that’s just the start with more than 30 other solutions to help you. Find out more.
Outcomes
The reason advertising exists: Effectiveness. Web traffic, sales, profit - your investment actually working.
Over the past 18 months, we’ve invested in a team of data scientists, econometricians and digital measurement experts with the simple but audacious goal: To measure all of the value that TV creates, for all of our advertisers.
We now have lots of shiny new measurement tools and research, to arm you with evidence of TV’s power. Find out about our new measurement innovation tools: Addressable Lift and Broadcast Auction Boost.
What will be on our screens in 2024
ITV Managing Director, Media and Entertainment, Kevin Lygo celebrated the first year of ITVX and looked ahead to some upcoming programming highlights for 2024.
Sport
Next year will be an enormous year in Sport - with more than ever before. With the Euros, the FA Cup, the Women’s Euro Qualifiers and the Women’s Nations League, and in rugby ITV is the home of the Six Nations. Plus, we have horse racing every weekend with the Grand National in April, as well as the Tour de France.
Reality
A bumper year of Reality viewing in 2023 will be further built on in 2024 as Celebrity Big Brother and Love Island All Stars join the schedule. Heartwarming hit My Mum, Your Dad will return for a second series.
Entertainment
We’re the home of the biggest shows that bring families together, and own Saturday nights for the majority of the year. We’ll also be adding Wheel of Fortune with Graham Norton, Jeopardy with Stephen Fry and new format Password - a hilarious word association game, hosted by Stephen Mangan with team captains Alan Carr and Daisy May Cooper.
Comedy
Between new commissions and acquisitions comedy has proven extremely successful on ITVX, especially with 16-34s. Changing Ends, with self proclaimed national treasure Alan Carr, will be back for season two, along with new comedy G’wed set in working class Liverpool.
Factual
We’ve seen topical, pacy human interest documentaries with talkability perform really well with 16-34s, and we have plenty planned on the schedule including more from the unstoppable Olivia Attwood.
Drama
In 2024 our dramas feel even more modern and contemporary, with great talent and storytelling. Shows to keep an eye out for include Joan with Sophie Turner as jewel thief Joan Hannington, supernatural small town thriller Passenger, Until I Kill You with Anna Maxwell Martin, harrowing Covid-19 account Breathtaking with Joanne Froggatt, and a triumphant story of justice in Mr. Bates vs. The Post Office.
And that’s a wrap on what we covered at the 2023 ITV Palooza, check out all our snaps here.
