Stvg Regulatory News (STVG)

7am, Tuesday 7 March 2023

 STV Player launches on Planet V and doubles targeted advertising in Q1

· STV Player's inventory now live on programmatic video advertising platform, Planet V

· 90% of STV's digital advertising now targeted across the UK, compared with 40% in 2022

· Scottish advertisers and agencies can now book data-enabled, fully-addressable advertising on STV Player for the first time

Scottish media company STV Group has joined ITV's advertising platform, Planet V, and seen the level of targeted, programmatic advertising on their streaming service, STV Player, increase from 40% to 90% in its first month since going live.

In December 2022, the broadcasters announced an enhanced strategic partnership which sees STV Player take exclusive Scottish rights for a range of ITVX original and premier content, encompassing at least 100 hours of new boxsets per year. The agreement has also seen ITV's market-leading sales team taking on exclusive responsibility for selling all digital VOD and simulcast advertising inventory on STV Player, including joining Planet V. The partnership extends ITV's sales reach and allows STV to benefit from ITV's unrivalled scale and targeting capability in the UK market. 

In addition to UK-wide clients, Scottish advertisers and agencies can now use the self-service Planet V platform to explore, plan and book targeted campaigns on STV Player that are customised to their needs and powered by first party user data, all in a brand safe, premium and automated environment.

The partnership creates a genuine one-stop-shop for Scottish advertising for the first time across linear, VOD and now programmatic, with the aim of attracting new, digital-only advertisers who haven't advertised on TV before. 

Peter Reilly, Commercial Director of STV, said: "Digital advertising has been a strong performer for STV in recent years, with revenues more than doubling since 2018. Through this enhanced partnership with ITV, our digital sales will now benefit from unrivalled scale and targeting capability at very high volume through the Planet V platform. We're seeing the impact in our performance after only a few weeks, with higher advertising yields and new digital-only advertisers coming onto the platform for the first time."

Rhys Mclachlan, Director of Advanced Advertising ITV, said: "We're delighted to have STV join us on Planet V and to see the positive effect that it is already having. Bringing STV inventory onto the platform and enabling common data targeting across both STV and ITV's inventory delivers material buying efficiencies and adds real value to our mutual advertiser and agency partners."

Planet V is the UK's second largest programmatic video advertising platform after Google, giving advertising agencies access to data-enabled, fully addressable audiences at scale. It offers self-service capability with more than 1500 users across every agency group, and first party customer data from over 40m users, now including STV Player.

STV will continue to sell digital sponsorship, partnerships and all Scottish spot advertising through its in-house teams in London and Scotland.

Media Contact:

Kirstin Stevenson, STV | kirstin.stevenson@stv.tv |07803970106