ITV, the UK’s biggest commercial broadcaster, announces that it has signed an exclusive UK and Ireland licensing agreement with Amobee, a global digital advertising technology company, for end-to-end programmatic buying and selling of premium video inventory on the ITV Hub.

This will enable ITV to launch a new, fully programmatic, premium advanced advertising platform, uniquely built using Amobee’s advertising technology which allows advertisers complete control over the purchasing of their campaigns across ITV’s premium VOD service, the ITV Hub. This new functionality means ITV will now give advertisers the best of both worlds – the ability to deliver mass simultaneous reach across linear channels, alongside targeted, data-driven addressable advertising on the Hub, appealing to a wider range of advertisers and meeting their widening requirements whilst maximising the commercial return for ITV.

The platform will give advertisers the opportunity for customer-controlled fully-programmatic buying, with advanced data-enabled targeting. The simple-to-use dashboard will give advertisers the functionality to plan and buy their VOD campaigns, at their pace, whenever and wherever they want.

The ITV Hub has over 28 million subscribers, with over 79% of all 16-34 year olds in the country registered on the service, and saw a 32% increase in viewing in the past year with over 446 million hours of online viewing. The ITV Hub had its biggest ever day on 3 July when thanks to the World Cup and Love Island the Hub received a record 9.7 million simulcast (live) and catch-up requests.  England’s semi-final against Croatia saw 4.3m simulcast requests – The Hub’s biggest ever number for live programming.

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Carolyn McCall, CEO, ITV said: “This agreement enables ITV to respond to our customers’ needs of frictionless targeted advertising in a brand safe environment complementing what they currently do on our channels.

“It accelerates the strategic development of our VOD advertising capabilities and provides a technology platform that will enable ITV to create an industry standard for VOD to match the established system for linear advertising.”

Kelly Williams, Managing Director, Commercial, ITV said: “This brings the functionality that’s previously only been available on large social platforms to the ITV Hub – offering addressable, targeted advertising around premium content. Our exclusive licence to use Amobee’s technology and develop it to best serve the needs of advertisers enables us to create our own platform, and as that rolls out we’ll look to invite other broadcasters to join.”

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“ITV is working to deliver the most ambitious programmatic video initiative in the United Kingdom, a testament to their innovative, forward-thinking leadership among broadcasters and commitment to invest in new video technology,” said Kim Perell, CEO of Amobee. “Our strategic partnership will unlock the value of advanced TV for both ITV and their customers across the United Kingdom.”

Highlighting the appetite of advertisers for a platform of this kind, Chris Williams, CEO PMX said: “The marketing landscape, and the challenges that we have on behalf of clients have changed enormously. There’s been huge disruption in the marketplace and the direction of travel had been in four areas. One is the use of data and automation, second is around the creation of custom audiences, the third is around cross-screen measurement and the unification of platforms and fourthly is around advanced analytics. This relationship that ITV is developing with Amobee is critical to accelerating success in all those areas.”

Adam Pace, Chief Digital Officer OMG, said: “This is just what the industry needs and I’m delighted that ITV has taken the lead. It’s great that ITV is investing in technology to evolve the way we trade.”

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