Advertisers look for advantage in Sky’s ITV deal

During ITV’s investor call held July 6, brands were barely mentioned, despite the fact that the combined businesses will control roughly £3.9 billion in ad revenue, almost half (44%) of the U.K.’s annual TV ad spend. Instead, the emphasis was on the upside for ITV shareholders and on how the combined entity would stick to ITV’s responsibilities as a public service broadcaster.

Sky’s purchase of ITV, first signaled last year, will combine Comcast’s U.K. assets (Peacock, Sky, Universal Ads) with ITV’s broadcast business and ad-supported streaming platform ITVX. (ITV’s Studios production arm won’t be part of the acquisition.) According to group CFO and COO Chris Kennedy, ITVX’s presence boosted the deal’s valuation significantly.

“We wouldn’t be in this position if the team hadn’t done an amazing job on ITVX and the viewing and the advertising revenue that’s come from that,” Kennedy told analysts on Monday.

But whether ITVX and Sky parent Comcast’s own streaming services might end up merged, or how the combined companies might meld their ad sales teams, technology and behind-the-scenes infrastructure, has so far been left unsaid by the executives behind the deal. Comcast, you’ll recall, is also in the process of splitting its business into two entities.

Speaking to analysts on behalf of ITV, Kennedy referred only to the greater scale the combined companies could offer brands, relative to the market pitches of rivals like Netflix and Amazon.

“The global streamers have really accelerated what they do in the U.K. in particular. Also, that’s had an impact obviously on viewers and on advertisers,” he said. “We think the market has changed fundamentally, which means scale is very, very important.”

Meanwhile, Sky CEO Dana Strong spoke only to reassure investors that the combined entity’s share of broadcast ad revenue wouldn’t get in the way of regulator approval for the deal. (In the context of the overall British ad market, it’ll govern a 6.5% share, “quite a minority” per Strong.)

With details scarce, the British ad industry’s official organs ISBA and the IPA issued statements with calls for advertisers to have their say stitched between the lines.

“Linear TV is a distinct market within the broader video ecosystem and remains uniquely powerful for building brands,” said the IPA’s director general Paul Bainsfair. “As such, the merged entities’ dominant share likely means advertiser protections need consideration.”

“Advertisers will rightly want to understand what [the deal] means for pricing, transparency, independent measurement, innovation and market competition,” added Bobi Carley, director of industry relations at ISBA. “The interests of brands, who invest billions in U.K. media, must be fully considered throughout the process.”

The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) will provide a platform for those interests in time. It’ll also provide a potential stumbling block. Culture minister Lisa Nandy has shown a more aggressive attitude toward sizable media deals lately, with a declaration last week that she was “minded to intervene” in Paramount’s deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery. And similar bids to reach critical scale, such as the merger between France’s TF1 and M6, have been scuppered by regulators in the recent past.

For Chris Daines, chief investment officer at Dentsu U.K., the deal is confirmation that the media consolidation trend playing out in the U.S. market has made its way across the Atlantic. “Consolidation has always been anticipated in the market. I think everyone expected it; it makes sense to come together,” he said.

The holding company hadn’t received any information from Sky or ITV on how the merger might affect its clients, he noted.

The upsides for advertisers, according to Gartner analyst Jessica Dervyn, likely lie in simplicity and scale. Marketers can expect to deploy products like Sky’s Adsmart targeting solution across ITV’s large audiences, for example. “It’ll be easier to execute campaigns, and [achieve] greater cross-screen reach,” she said. “This is really about creating more like a scaled advertising data streaming platform that is capable of competing with those global media and tech companies.”

Daines said he anticipated the combined Sky-ITV ads business to develop more addressable features for advertisers. “Both ITV and Sky have been pretty innovative when it comes to addressable video over time,” he said.

Despite Sky-ITV’s anticipated market share, Daines said he didn’t expect a price hike. “They still have a huge amount of competition from the likes of Amazon and Netflix … Pricing naturally will be under pressure anyway.”