4 minute read
Digital or Bust
A Spy Among Friends © 2021 Sony Pictures Television.
ITV’s new two-tier free ad-supported and subscription streaming service ITVX has launched with ITV executives hoping it becomes a portal for live viewing, rather than a catch-up service. How will it compete in a saturated streaming market against new AVOD platforms including Netflix and Disney+?
Announced last spring and launched on schedule last month, ITVX is seen as the cornerstone of ITV’s digital acceleration. The replacement for ITV Hub combines SVOD and AVOD in two tiers and arrives just ahead of Netflix and Disney’s new ad-supported service. It represents a GBP160 million investment and quite simply has to work if the commercial broadcaster is to thrive.
Yet, with the cost of living biting, advertising expected to take a down turn and consumers seemingly cutting back on streaming subscriptions, the new platform could face an uphill battle in a competitive market. “As we head into difficult times, being free ad-supported has got to be a compelling reason to watch,” ITV Chief Product Officer, Deep Bagchee told the IBC conference in September. “The interesting thing is that live is still quite strong. That’s how we landed on ITVX, into which we will all of our services into a brand new content proposition, a new brand and a new content offering.”
ITVX launches with a library of 9,000 hours of content, including 300 blockbuster movies. ITV signed deals with Glaswegian-based Anime Ltd, the largest independent anime licensor in the UK; and CBS Reality for a raft of true crime factual. The
Without Sin © Mark Bourdillon.
Riches © 2022 Amazon Content Services LLC. paid-for tier offers an additional 6,000 hours including exclusive dramas that will premiere nine months before running on the broadcast ITV channel. These include A Spy Among Friends, about Kim Philby starring Damian Lewis and Guy Pearce, and Litvinenko, with David Tennant. ITVX will also provide British boxsets from BritBox.
However, ITV intend ITVX to become the portal for live viewing. It will be the home of Big Brother, when ITV brings back the reality show in 2023 in a bid to reach a younger audience.
“We want to move from being a catch-up service to becoming a destination for discovery and a true streamer,” Bagchee said. “Our goal is to double our monthly active users to 20 million; to double the number of streaming hours on our streaming services to two billion; and double subscribers over the next five years.”
Bagchee also highlighted the role of FAST in the linear space.
“FAST gives us the opportunity to experiment with channels and see how they’re doing on streaming platforms, which gives us a lot more flexibility when it comes to learning about user behaviour,” he said. “We need to establish how we carry out audience development, and potentially how we can bring the ITVX experience for audiences and brands into the metaverse.”
Sport will be a key attraction to the platform which launched just ahead of the World Cup. Sports are considered the perfect introduction for a service designed to bring casual television viewers to ITV content and then persuade them to stay.
Some commentators judge it risky to launch alongside such a high profile event given that ITV Hub crashed during the 2021 run of Love Island and froze for half an hour during one Euro 2020 football game.
ITV executives are bullish about its prospects. “ITVX will provide a simplified and seamless experience,” Carolyn McCall, ITV’s CEO, said when ITVX was first announced. “We are supercharging our streaming business, fundamentally shifting our focus to think digital first, as well as optimising our broadcast channels, by continuing to attract unrivalled mass audiences. In doing so we are responding to changing viewing habits, but also the evolving needs from our advertisers. This will enable ITV to continue to be both commercial viewers’ and advertisers’ first choice.”
Rhys McLachlan, ITV’s director of advanced advertising, told The Drum: “It’s not a lipstick-ona-pig, ITV Hub 2.0 job – it’s a proper transformative experience. It’s like going from a Nokia brick to an iPhone.”
“We are going to come from being average in the field to leagues ahead – it’s going to be way better than [BBC] iPlayer,” he predicted.
ITVX also boasts a wealth of consumer data gleaned from the broadcaster’s 35 million registered users. Adverts will be personalised, with viewers’ gender, date of birth and postcode matched with content consumption and social media usage harvested from consumer data firm, Experian.
A free content proposition is being added by all major SVODs are they look to stem churn. It is not clear to what extent viewers of the ad-supported service can be upsold to a premium tier. On the other hand, aggregating content including live and sports in one app, is increasingly seen as attractive.
A recent survey (of US consumers by marketers Publisher’s Clearing House) concluded that the winners in the streaming wars will be those companies that diversify into news or sports or video games or preferably a mix of the lot.
“It is glaringly clear is that having movies and television shows are now, simply, table stakes,” said analyst Evan Shapiro. “They are not at all a differentiator: Every service has them. In streaming TV, scripted and non-fiction television are an expensive, hit-driven, share-shift model. Consumers of all ages and incomes will sign up for them, to binge something. But if that is all you have, they will not stick around.”
“WE WANT TO MOVE FROM BEING A CATCH-UP SERVICE TO BECOMING A DESTINATION FOR DISCOVERY AND A TRUE STREAMER.”
