ITV and YouTube have announced a new partnership that will see ITV joining YouTube’s partner programme. The deal will allow ITV to distribute hundreds of hours of content on the platform while managing advertising sales around its programming.
ITV’s programming on YouTube will include full episodes of popular shows across genres such as entertainment, sport, reality, and documentaries. Programmes such as I’m A Celebrity, The Masked Singer, Love Island, This Morning, and Loose Women will be available, with additional genre-based and show-specific YouTube channels planned, including ITV News, ITV Sport, and ITV Daytime.
ITV will also produce digital-first content for YouTube, including clips, compilations, and material from its archives. This aims to complement the full episodes and further engage audiences on the platform.
ITV will sell advertising opportunities around its content on YouTube. The commercial team will enable advertisers to target campaigns by factors such as programme, genre, demographic, and device type.
A dedicated YouTube sales team has been established within ITV Commercial, led by Abul Noor in the newly created role of Head of YouTube Sales. Noor previously worked at Channel 4 and will oversee advertising sales for ITV’s and ITV Studios’ content on YouTube.
The partnership will also involve ITV Studios’ digital content label, Zoo 55, which will manage the presence of ITV and ITV Studios channels on YouTube. Zoo 55 oversees channels featuring content such as The Graham Norton Show, Hell’s Kitchen, The Voice Global, and natural history programming like Our World.
Kelly Williams, ITV Commercial Managing Director, said “Working with YouTube provides our advertisers with even more ways to engage with audiences in premium brand-safe content from the nation’s best loved TV shows, with a wide selection of targeting options. ITV Commercial’s sales team will be selling the inventory around all our YouTube content, and working alongside ITV Studios and Zoo 55 we will be creating opportunities for clients across a wide span of genres and programmes beyond ITV’s commissioned long form content. I’m also delighted to welcome Abul Noor to our team to spearhead this important development in our digital commercial strategy.”
