How Can Sky Improve ITV as an advertising proposition?

Love Island, Coronation Street, Emmerdale, Britain’s Got Talent. All still culturally relevant entertainment properties, but in the UK with the emergency of Netflix, Disney+, YouTube, etc their audiences are diminishing.

Television advertising is splintering fast as viewers scatter across an ever‑expanding universe of platforms — a shift Dame Carolyn McCall underscored this week while defending Sky’s £1.6bn takeover of ITV.

Last year, ITV reported a fall of 5 per cent in ad revenue from 2024, with digital ad sales up by 12 per cent, offsetting the decline of linear sales — a trend that it has little way to reverse without a drastic solution such as this. But even joining forces with Sky doesn't make it a significant player on a global stage.

Linear broadcasters aren’t just competing with each other anymore; they are fighting for attention in a vast, algorithm‑driven video marketplace where even a Sky‑ITV giant would command only around a fifth of UK ad spend.

"When you look at the advertising market, it’s not three broadcasters anymore competing with each other for linear advertising. It is now just enormous numbers of people competing for video advertising... and actually, if you look at that market, Sky and ITV combined would be about 20 per cent of advertising, it’s very low... The whole world has changed for everybody, including viewers and advertisers," McCall told reporters on the press call discussing the deal.

But this deal is more than an advertising play. ITVX — the broadcaster’s streaming platform — currently has around 1.3 million paying subscribers while its significant data offer stems from its 16,4 million active monthly users. And in an age of opaque media numbers, ITV remains a trusted platform for brands to lean upon too.

ITV has shaped British culture for generations, trading beloved programmes for the audience’s attention. That won’t disappear — but the ad model around it is evolving at speed. So what must Sky bring to ITV to strengthen its appeal in this new era? Here are some of the thoughts of industry execs on how the new owners could up ITV’s ad game in the long run.

Zoe Eagle, CEO of Iris

I bloody love telly. Rivals, The Bear, the footie, the tennis, Bluey (my four year old) Aladdin on repeat (my eight year old), and whatever nostalgic rabbit hole my Netflix algorithm has decided I’m in this week. Great television still commands extraordinary attention. It still makes us laugh, cry, argue and, every so often, brings the whole country together.

That’s what ITV does better than almost anyone. Alongside live sport, it creates some of the last genuinely shared cultural moments — I’m a Celebrity, Britain’s Got Talent, Love Island. Those moments are increasingly rare as most viewing now happens alone or within generational bubbles, which only makes them more valuable. Bringing those cultural assets together with Sky creates a powerful proposition — not just because of the scale of the audiences, but because of their ability to shape culture.

The opportunity, then, isn’t simply to sell more advertising around that attention. It’s to help brands participate in it. The ad break — whether broadcast or streamed — still feels like a compromise to the viewing experience, while too much branded content compromises the content itself. We trust creators to weave brands naturally into the content they make every day. Why not give television’s creative talent the same opportunity? Not to make longer adverts, but to create ideas that genuinely add to the experience. If Sky can use the cultural power of ITV to help brands participate rather than interrupt, then this deal could become about much more than trading efficiencies. It could point towards a better model for advertising altogether.

James Mackenzie, chief investment officer, Havas Media Network UK 

For advertisers, we anticipate a more streamlined buying experience, with ITV and Sky consolidating into a single access point. This should drive greater campaign efficiency through unified measurement, combined data assets, and integrated technology capabilities, all delivered across a shared ecosystem of linear channels and digital platforms.

However, rather than viewing this acquisition solely through the lens of how Sky will enhance ITV, we should consider the strategic value of the combined entity, one that stands to be greater than the sum of its parts.

Most significantly, this acquisition provides the scale necessary for both ITV and Sky to compete effectively in an increasingly global market. The combined entity will be better positioned to maintain and grow investment in UK and international content, critical for continuing to deliver audiences and sustaining a healthy, profitable domestic ecosystem for advertisers.

Jo Lyall, executive chair, media for MSQ

On paper, if you combine [Sky's ad platform] AdSmart’s addressability with ITV’s reach then you’ve got the closest thing UK broadcast has to a genuine YouTube competitor. But scale alone doesn’t win trust and growth.

If Sky wants this to change the game as an ad platform, then three things need to happen:

• Unify measurement: Advertisers won’t plan seamlessly across linear, ITVX and AdSmart until there’s one currency, not three dashboards bolted together. 

• Open up the data properly: First-party ITVX login data plus Sky’s household targeting is a goldmine, but only if it’s accessible through clean APIs, not locked behind bespoke deals for the biggest spenders, within the obvious bounds of GDPR.

• Fix the buying experience: Agencies don’t need more premium inventory, they need it to be as easy to transact as a programmatic buy. Combine two broadcasters and you get bigger reach. Combine two ad tech stacks badly and you just get a bigger headache.

Beyond that, AdSmart’s real power is dynamic creative per household, but almost no brand or agency produces addressable creative at that scale today. The bottleneck isn’t inventory or data it’s production.

Given the speed this deal is likely to run at, the market won’t stand still and AI-enabled media buying with creative integration will keep evolving regardless. So maybe the real question isn’t what this combination can do today, it’s how fast they can move. What they could deliver right now, even fully integrated, is arguably less interesting than the proposition they could design for the coming years where the brands and agencies will have very different capabilities and operating models. 

Bobi Carley, director of industry relations at ISBA

The ITV/Sky deal is one of the most significant developments in the UK media market for many years. Advertisers will rightly want to understand what it means for pricing, transparency, independent measurement, innovation and market competition.

ISBA has been engaging directly with senior leaders at both organisations, and we are hearing from brand advertisers on their questions and concerns.

The interests of brands, who invest billions in UK media, must be fully considered throughout the process. We will continue to facilitate open dialogue between our members and the combined business to help secure the best possible outcomes – and we will ensure that advertisers’ voices are front and centre as these plans develop.

Paul Bainsfair, director general, IPA

Broadcaster consolidation is increasingly inevitable in light of the growing dominance of the big tech platforms. That said, the advertising and media landscape is not a single market.

Linear TV is a distinct market within the broader video ecosystem and remains uniquely powerful for building brands – its scale, creativity and emotional impact make it an incredibly effective medium for driving long-term growth. As such, the merged entities’ dominant share likely means advertiser protections need consideration.