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I can’t believe how high this share went up yesterday, as it’s no surprise the deal being proposed was going to be rejected.
Did anyone else dump at 1.60? I only got rid of 50% of my holding, wish I had the balls to do the lot.
Ps I am no day trader, have always been in for the long run.
That ad was never going to be able to be broadcast on TV, its all PR spin. TV didn't lose it to social as it was never,ever going to be on TV.
Why do you focus on Youtube / social when you can say the same about radio, cinema, press etc. Advertisers plan their campaigns to reach people at differnent times. Nothing can beat TV in terms of impact, brand fame etc.
Where TV really have to get with the times is addressable targeting, something that they are doing (Adsmart) and are now working together. TV, in my view is in good shape.
Unfortunatley the story is about advertising not TV spend. Also alot of brands stop advertising at Christmas as their ads will get lost due to the amount of chit chat and spend of the big boys (John Lewis, M&S etc.)
There was certainly not much else to set the pulses racing, even though Lygo talked about how 45 of the 50 most watched entertainment shows are on ITV.
Stephen Mulhern’s quiz, In For A Penny, a spin-off from Saturday Night Takeaway, is the only new entertainment show of note (ITV sent Mulhern around media agencies and showed a film of different agency leaders playing the game with him).
Meanwhile, Match Fit, a factual show about former England football stars from the 1980s and 1990s – such as David Seaman and John Barnes – trying to get back in shape as a team of veteran all-stars, managed by Harry Redknapp, does look fun.
Ironically, a fabulous animated clip, featuring a polar bear and a squirrel on ice, was just a promo (produced at great expense) for the latest series of Dancing on Ice.
Commercial changes
Still, McCall is making some commercial changes behind the scenes.
"It’s not an evolution, it’s a revolution," ITV claims, as it talks about being "your most valuable business partner", not just a media partner.
McCall is creating a new role of head of client strategy and development, who will lead a team that works directly with clients to foster more creative partnerships that go beyond ad spots and sponsorship.
The success of this year’s Love Island, for which there were an "unprecedented" 11 commercial partners, and new product placement on Coronation Street, with Costa and Co-op stores as permanent on-set fixtures, have shown what’s possible.
Another priority is going direct to consumer and generating revenues from ITV Hub, and McCall is promising a big investment in ad tech as well as in subscription video-on-demand.
ITV Hub already has scale. Two million people watched Love Island live on the online platform – more than 99.9% of all programmes on all digital TV channels this year, Kelly Williams, managing director of commercial, pointed out.
Williams and his deputy, Simon Daglish, were keen to stress how ITV can offer advertisers both "mass reach" on linear TV and "tailor-made targeting" on ITV Hub by postcode, demographic and device.
They showed a chart of two dozen new-economy, digital brands such as Purplebricks, Webuyanycar.com and Just Eat that are increasingly using ITV.
Just Eat, the sponsor of The X Factor, sold 500,000 meals during the final of the talent show last Christmas. "That’s more than TV," Daglish said.
Some of this sounds a lot more like evolution than revolution.
As if to prove that, Robbie Williams, a new judge on The X Factor, closed the Palooza by singing Let Me Entertainment You and Angels from the 1990s – the good old days when no-one in TV had to worry about Google, Facebook or Netflix.
Yet McCall is not to be underestimated after transforming easyJet in her last role and she is right about the need to drive change and have a higher purpose with projects such as its work for the Campaign Against Living Miserably’s "Project 84" to prevent male suicide.
She
There was a clear message at this annual presentation to advertisers, the first to be hosted by new chief executive Dame Carolyn McCall.
She wants this to be the start of a new era, when ITV is more confident and more proactive about celebrating the power of TV, working directly with advertisers as well as agencies, seeking new revenues from consumers and taking charge of its destiny.
Hence this year’s event was bigger (1,300 guests), had a new location (after three years at the London Palladium) and given a new name (it was previously called the ITV Gala).
McCall put her own stamp on the ITV Palooza by taking to the stage to welcome ITV’s on-screen talent and advertisers – unlike her predecessor, Adam Crozier, who avoided speaking at previous ITV Galas.
The 90-minute presentation was double the length of Channel 4's overly short upfront event in July.
"This is big; this is really important for us," McCall told Campaign. "Making the move [to a new location] was very much a signal of us being a much more contemporary brand.
"We’ve got lots of things that make us contemporary, but a lot of the industry – because we’re a very established player – don’t really see us like that.
"One of the things that we have to do is really make sure we are changing those perceptions."
New programming
Symbolism aside, the evidence of substantive change is limited so far.
Kevin Lygo, the director of television, offered lots of dramas and showed some good clips from three new shows.
Cheat is a psychological drama about a Cambridge University don, played by Katherine Kelly, who suspects a student of cheating.
Cleaning Up is a witty caper about a cleaning lady, starring Sheridan Smith, who works in a stockbroking firm and picks up insider dealing tips.
The Widow is a Kate Beckinsale-fronted thriller about a woman who believes her husband has died in a plane crash in Congo, only to discover three years later that he is secretly alive.
Also upcoming are a feelgood drama about Olympic ice-skaters Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean, who were sitting in the Royal Festival Hall, and the return of existing drama series including Victoria and The Durrells.
One marketer in the audience wondered how much ITV Studios’ own commercial imperative to make shows that it can sell around the world is driving its programming investments.
ITV slowly builds addressable TV advertising offer (D) Commercial broadcaster ITV has been building out its addressable TV offering, but it’s been a slow burn on linear TV partly due to finding the right tech partner. Currently, the broadcaster offers targeted ads on its on-demand and catch-up service, ITV Hub, which has 27 million subscribers. ITV announced last November it was working with an ad tech firm to help it serve ads relevant to viewers’ interests, demographics and lifestyles through connected TVs but has since cut ties with them. “There isn’t the tech out there we’re comfortable in using for addressable in a linear environment,” said Simon Daglish, group commercial director at ITV at the New Video Frontiers conference in London this week.
ITV is aware it needs the technology to build out its linear addressable TV solutions, either through acquisition — it lost out to Singtel in the bid for Videology — or partnering with others. It’s also working with other commercial broadcasters, such as Channel 4 and Channel 5, on addressable TV products and ways to share data that will strengthen its position against Facebook and Google, although Daglish couldn’t share details.
Through ITV Hub, the broadcaster can offer regionalized targeted ads, although the analytics have been kept within its own walled garden, a bone of contention for buyers. Hub is a “major source” of revenue, said Daglish, and it’s continuing to grow 54 percent this year. According to investment analysts, Liberum, ITV’s targeted ads now make up more than 50 percent of ITV’s online video-on-demand offering.
“That is a significant move in our direction and significant move in our targeting of Google and Facebook and taking them on at their own game,” said Daglish. “The difference between Facebook’s highly targeted ads and TV is that we have great content. We see Facebook and Google as they see us; we’re going to go after their revenue.”
Liberum also estimates that due to ITV’s diversification efforts into VOD, content and what ITV calls direct to consumer (events, products and licensing), will generate nearly 45 percent of its future earnings growth. Previously, Daglish said 80 percent of ITV’s revenue came from advertising, it plans to get this down to half in the next 18 months.
Jonathan Wait, head of product at Dentsu Aegis agency Amplify said ITV’s addressable progress has been slow, with little movement in the last year, and it largely trades on a direct basis with ITV Hub as its programmatic offering is not yet attractive enough. “The issue with most broadcaster programmatic VOD offering is that the benefit doesn’t outweigh the cost; the CPMs are the same as buying direct,” he said. “The added DSP and tech fees on both sides make it more expensive for advertisers, so it doesn’t make a lot of sense right now.”
Waite said the tech fees add on between 5 and 10 percent to the CPM, which range between £25 ($32) and £30 ($38.94) depending on the supplier and le
Banijay-Zodiak left as front-runner for Endemol Shine ITV has reported to have exited Endemol bidding. TMT Finance reports ITV has exited bidding for Endemol, with Banijay-Zodiak left as front-runner. Price range continued to be reported at E2.5bn-E3.0bn. FremantleMedia, all3media, Sony Pictures and Lionsgate were all reported as initial bidders are now reported to have dropped out. Endemol Shine is 50/50 owned by 21st Century Fox and Apollo Global Management. Banijay-Zodiak is 26% held by Vivendi
Liberty Global will lean towards shareholders with US$12bn Vodafone cash proceeds while mulling Swiss consolidation and a Dutch buyout (Ovum) Liberty Global will have US$12 billion (€10 billion) in cash to potentially spend on M&A or share buybacks as well as paying off debt following its sale of assets to Vodafone, but with no obvious transaction on the horizon is likely to look to return a substantial portion to shareholders, according to president and CEO Mike Fries.
Fries, speaking at Goldman Sachs’ Communacopia Conference in the US, said there were “no transactions” that Liberty is currently looking at, and indicated that concern that Liberty would spend on acquisitions rather than return cash to stockholders was misplaced. He said that the company was likely to “lean into stock”, with buybacks when the cash came through. He said that as the company got closer to completion it would look more closely at “where we can put capital to work”.
Fries said that Liberty had got “six times its money” from Germany and had done well from the UK and from Switzerland. “We are pretty good allocators of capital”, he said. “We don’t do deals just to do deals. We are in this to create value, period,” he said.
Fries said that following completion of the Vodafone deal, Liberty would have its UK Virgin Media business, its “best cable asset” accounting 60% of operating cash flow and which “looks most like a US cable asset”, US$12 billion in cash and three other scale markets – the VodafoneZiggo JV, the Belgian Telenet business and the Swiss business. “All of these are at varying stages of maturity,” he said. OCF growth would be a blend of the steady UK business and the other three markets “at various points in the inflection curve”. Fries said that Liberty had invested “a ton of money” and was now ready to take cashflow from its investments.
Fries said that Switzerland remains a “challenging” market and that Liberty was looking at “all of its options” in the country. “Maybe we should just take Switzerland public,” he said, before going on to speculate that “there is only one possible solution” towards consolidation in the market – that being a tie-up with rival Sunrise. Of other two players, he said, Salt had made a negligible impact on the quad-play market and Swisscom was out of play for obvious reasons.
Fries said that Liberty remained committed to investing in Switzerland and described new Swiss CEO Severina Pascu as a “rock star” who would make a difference. The company will launch its EOS box there in the country this year, along with 1Gbps broadband next year, he said. The rollout of EOS is a big part of Liberty’s plan to turnaround the Swiss market, said Fries. “It’s going to be another tough year next year. Next year will be better but still tough. By 2020 the business will be stable,” he said, and compared the likely trajectory in the country with the Netherlands, where Liberty had also gone through tough times and come through. Libert
We were hoping for the big reveal on ITV’s strategy refresh on 25th July when it reported 1H results and we certainly got more detail, but it isn’t the full picture. The £60m of investment over 3 years to drive a Direct to Consumer model, strengthen ITV as an integrated producer broadcaster and grow UK and global production makes sense. The question of whether it is enough has arisen frequently since the announcement. The fact that M&A and SVoD are outside of the scope of the announced refresh suggests that there is more to come. The timing of both M&A and an SVOD service announcement are not solely within ITV’s control, hence the limited detail.
ITV believes it has a role to play in the SVOD landscape and the CEO said the group is exploring options which could include going alone or collaborating with UK and/or non UK based partners. Recent press reports suggest that ITV, BBC and Channel 4 have been discussing a potential service, possibly with NBC1. The UK free to air broadcasters already have a relationship via the joint ownership of Freeview. This wouldn’t be the first time the UK public service broadcasters (PSBs) have planned a joint SVOD service. Project Kangaroo was the first attempt 10 years ago (it even got as far as appointing management) but it was blocked by the Competition Commission in 2009. The stance of the regulators across Europe
appears to have changed, with most suggesting they would be supportive of local. In an OTT world, scale and reach (across devices and platforms) are crucial in order to soak up the content and technology costs. The importance of ‘best in class’ technology (to support the user experience) and the service being widely available should not be underestimated.
Proliferation of usage across online platforms means that sole reliance on an advertising funded VOD service is risky. ITV could launch a standalone SVOD service but for it to stand a chance of success it would require more investment than ITV is likely to be willing to put in, especially as the path to returns is not entirely clear. At the same time, we acknowledge that any broadcaster has to weigh up the risk to its legacy broadcast business on the back of a successful SVOD business.
Partnering to launch an SVOD service appears to be the sensible option as it will provide the all-important scale required, especially in relation to content (as the UK PSBs could fill a library with >10,000 hours – the benchmark we use for the required hours of content a SVOD service needs). It limits the risk from losses during the investment phase but it also has a better chance of driving subs and limiting churn. These are all ‘new’ areas for broadcasters, which have always operated a wholesale model. It will require a suitable management team who know how to run a ‘direct to consumer’ business and are experienced with managing billing, churn, technology and content