ITV Confident on Digital Targets

Jeff Henry, director of ITV Consumer, told yesterday’s Association of Online Publishers (AOP) conference in London that he was very confident of meeting the revenue target of £150m by 2010 – and of making ITV.com a top ten UK site by that date.

The target includes income from Friends Reunited, which he admitted needed a new generation site – “well in hand” – but had meanwhile delivered seven consecutive months of record trading.

ITV.com ‘s greatest challenge is “to bring the advertising world with us,” said Henry. There would be a degree of experimentation, including areas such as product placement, he forecast.

Under questioning he gave little away but the underlying hint was a possible forthcoming agreement with YouTube along the lines of that made with the BBC.

Henry admitted that whilst Britain’s Got Talent got 12m viewers, a series of videos of winner Paul Potts on YouTube attracted 30m views.

Whilst this undoubtedly delivered positive viral marketing to ITV, Henry accepted that it clearly delivered no additional revenues. This was before the relaunch of ITV.com.

Traffic to ITV.com is up 45% year on year, driven strongly by Formula One content; and 80% of viewers watching a video also watched a complete pre-roll advertisement.

ITV: 020 7843 8000 www.itv.com Association of Online Publishers: www.ukaop.org.uk