ITV Palooza: Broadcaster launches addressable solution for linear and a TikTok tie-up
At ITV’s annual Palooza event, the broadcaster debuted an addressable advertising product and announced a tie-up with TikTok as it sought to project confidence just days after rumours swirled of a potential sale to Sky.
The addressable solution, known as Live Addressable +, aims to bring thousands of addressable targeting options to ITV’s linear broadcast channels for the first time.
Bookable exclusively via Planet V, the broadcaster’s proprietary self-service addressable ad platform, Live Addressable + applies ITVs existing addressable capabilities across live inventory on ITV1, ITV2, ITV3, ITV4 and ITV Quiz.
Advertisers will be able to target viewers based on categories such as life stage, income bracket and location. They can also match ITV’s first-party audience data with databases from Carwow and Tesco Clubcard via ITV’s Retail Match product to target based on shopping preferences.
“Since launching Planet V we’ve given brands the opportunity to define and target the audiences that are important to them through the power of TV advertising on VOD, and we’re thrilled to be bringing this opportunity to our most powerful live TV content,” commented ITV director of commercial strategy and trading, Ben Allen.
He added: “For advertisers, that means both extended reach and targeting of a whole different audience as we bring addressable capabilities into live TV.”
Separately, ITV anounced it would join TikTok’s Pulse Premiere programme, a contextual advertising solution that allows brands greater control over where they show up on the platform.
By joining Pulse Premiere, brands will now be able to choose to advertise directly adjacent to ITV content on the platform as it shows up in TikTok’s For You page.
TikTok bills the format as a way to better ensure brand safety on the platform, with UK general manager Kris Boger saying that he is “delighted” to bring ITV into the fold.
ITV confirms it is in ‘preliminary discussions’ to sell Media and Entertainment arm to Sky
‘Continuing to deliver’
At ITV’s first Palooza in two years, on-stage spirits appeared high even as the broadcaster warned last week that total ad revenue would decline 9% in Q4 and 6% for the full year 2025.
ITV CEO Dame Carolyn McCall gave a sneak peek of the broadcaster’s own new TV ad campaign, set to launch next year, and Media and Entertainment MD Kevin Lygo took to the stage alongside host Graham Norton to discuss a forthcoming content slate that includes a variety of dramas, scripted and unscripted comedies, and old hits like Love Island and The Masked Singer.
Norton himself is hosting a new ITV programme, The Neighbourhood, a Survivor-style reality competition that sees six families move into a Peak District town and subsequently vote each other out.
The lavish event, held at the Barbican in London, began with a flurry of live renditions of famous television ads, including a drumming Cadbury gorilla and a half-naked Levi’s “Laundrette” man, before McCall took the stage.
She immediately addressed the Sky-shaped elephant in the room in her opening remarks: “You will all, of course, have seen both our statement and the media coverage about ITV and Sky being in early discussions regarding a possible sale of our M&E business. As you can imagine, we can’t say anything more about that now. What we can say is that we will remain completely focused on ITV, and that we are continuing to deliver with great energy our strategy.”
Noting that broadcaster was “transforming rapidly”, she appealed to advertisers whose investment enables production of high-quality entertainment and news programming.
Kelly Williams and Simon Daglish, ITV’s top commercial leaders, subsequently took the stage to discuss forthcoming commercial opportunities with the broadcaster. Key to next year’s success will be sport: ITV will exclusively broadcast 10 live matches of the 2026 Six Nations rugby tournament (including every England fixture), as well as host World Cup matches next summer, two-thirds of which will occur in peak time.
Williams (left) and Daglish on stage at the Barbican Wednesday night.
Notably, the duo introduced a new “picture in picture” ad format for the World Cup, which will allow brands to advertise in a box on the right side of the screen while coverage of the match continues on the left side of the screen during breaks in the action.
Williams and Daglish promoted TV — and ITV’s place within the market — as a high-attention medium where consumers actually pay attention to ads. “TV is marketing performance”, Williams remarked, arguing that “your message is just more credible when it’s on TV”.
The pair said that ITV is “reengineering for the future”, with ITVX serving as “the engine for growth” alongside placing ITV content on TikTok and YouTube. Efforts in measurement, such as through ITV’s recently-launched Outcomes Planner and the forthcoming Lantern panel, also aim to provide advertisers of all sizes more robust, performance-based measurement.
Despite ITV’s push for performance budgets in a streaming-led future, Williams still offered a defense of ITV’s linear ad opportunities. “Don’t believe the narrative that linear TV is dead,” he said, pointing to a chart that showed ITV’s linear reach still dwarfed the likes of Netflix and Disney+ in the UK.
While linear still retains large audiences, particularly among older cohorts, its eventual decline has animated discussions around the future of ITV and whether it should sell itself to competitor Sky. The “preliminary discussions”, as McCall referred to them, would value ITV’s Media & Entertainment division at £1.6bn.
Several legal commentators have told The Media Leader that such a deal would raise substantial competition concerns for the Competition Markets Authority (CMA), as the combined business would own around 70% of the linear advertising market.
Meanwhile, the fate of ITV Studios, the broadcaster’s production and distribution arm, would be unclear if such a deal went forward.
This article has been updated after publication to include additional details from ITV Palooza.