ITV has announced a new distribution and commercial partnership with YouTube, enabling viewers in the United Kingdom to watch popular ITV programming online through YouTube. The collaboration marks another step in the ITV strategy to broaden its digital reach and engage audiences beyond its traditional broadcast channels.
Programming will include not only shows seen on ITV but those produced by ITV Studios for the BBC, such as The Graham Norton Show.
The ITV commercial team will sell the full range of advertising opportunities around ITV and ITV Studios channels on YouTube.
ITV will be showcasing full episodes of the biggest shows across all genres from sport to entertainment, documentary and reality to daytime and news, including I’m A Celebrity, An Audience With Kylie, and the its soap opera serioal dramas.
Genre based channels including ITV News and ITV Sport will be developed alongside channels for ITV Daytime shows including This Morning and Loose Women and broader show specific offerings such as Love Island.
Zoo 55, the new digital label of ITV Studios, will manage ITV and ITV Studios YouTube presence.
In addition, ITV will be creating and developing clips, compilations and fan content around its most popular brands specially tailored for the YouTube audience.
Kevin Lygo, the managing director of ITV Media and Entertainment said: “This partnership is part of our continuing strategic approach to maximise reach and viewing opportunities for audiences, wherever they choose to watch, alongside the successful and thriving ITVX, and our market leading commercial TV channels.”
Kelly Williams, the managing director of ITV Commercial, added: “Working with YouTube provides our advertisers with even more ways to engage with audiences in premium brand-safe content from the nation’s best loved TV shows, with a wide selection of targeting options.”
The breakthrough seems to be that ITV will be selling its own advertising inventory, rather than handing it all over to Alphabet.
Alison Lomax, the managing director of YouTube in the United Kingdom and Ireland, said: “ITV is one of the UK’s most beloved TV broadcasters and is home to a hugely diverse range of content — from I’m A Celebrity to Bullseye. So we are thrilled to be strengthening our partnership, which will see hundreds of hours of programmes available on YouTube for the first time. Through full episodes, clips, compilations and brand-new fan content, audiences will be able to forge even deeper connections with the shows they love.”
Although it will no doubt be presented as complimentary to the ‘thriving’ ITVX, the online video app from ITV, the announcement appears to be a recognition that ITV needs to fish where the fish are, in the massive pool filled by YouTube, rather than the fishbowl that is ITVX.
Audience research suggests that in the first half of 2024 the average individual in the United Kingdom spent 38 minutes a day watching YouTube at home. Over a third of time spent watching YouTube at home is now on a television set, with those aged 25-35 watching YouTube on television for an average of 19 minutes a day.
In comparison, over 2023-2023, the average daily viewing of ITV on demand per person was under 4 minutes, compared to just under half an hour a day of watching ITV live or recorded.
The risk is that there are plenty more fish in the YouTube sea, and once viewers are drawn into watching ITV programmes there they might just keep scrolling and get hooked on something else.