He has also ruled out the possibility of the broadcaster bringing the rest of the GMTV sales operation under ITV’s jurisdiction, saying: “It’s not currently on our agenda.”
Digby said the rationale behind bringing the ad sales of CITV back to ITV was that, since CITV is an ITV channel, ITV should be supplying the advertising solutions.
One agency’s head of broadcast said: “ITV could try and hike up prices now that it has made CITV part of the ITV brand. It could sell it for the same price as the rest of its digital portfolio.
“But I think the real reason ITV has done this is because it no longer shows kids programmes at 4pm, so it needed an outlet to attract children’s advertising money.”
Five sales director Kelly Williams commented: “The move is not great news for advertisers. ITV wouldn’t move the sales operation unless it was going to make a commercial gain. GMTV was the specialist at selling the space. ITV has done this to drive up the prices.”
However, Digby retorted: “We don’t even know what the GMTV prices are yet. The decision has nothing to do with hiking up the ad prices.”
The loss of CITV airtime sales comes at a difficult time for GMTV, which was recently hit with a £2m fine from Ofcom over misconduct relating to viewer phone-ins.
_1.jpg)
.jpg)