ITV has so far missed out on generating income from the 100 million YouTube views, as no ads are running against the material uploaded to the video-sharing website. The estimated income is potentially worth between £500,000 and £1m to the broadcaster.
However, a deal was struck at the weekend between ITV, Freemantle Media, the show's international rights owner, and owner of producer Talkback Thames, and YouTube under which a Britain's Got Talent channel has been created.
Traffic from outside the UK will be ad supported, with revenue shared between the partners, meaning ITV will now be able to tap into the online interest.
Freemantle Media also said today (27 April) it was in negotiations with a big name sponsor for the YouTube channel.
ITV.com, where all BGT material carries advertising, has been boosted by the interest and is currently showing a 700% increase in video views and page impressions year on year.
With a strong showing in the ratings, the show attracting 13.2 million viewers this weekend, against the opening week of 11.8 million, and ITV also reporting increased interest in the repeats on ITV2 and the later show on ITV1, the momentum shows no sign of slowing.
Billetts used its Newslive tool to track the media activity around Susan Boyle, which included more than 5,000 articles across newspapers and magazines, radio, TV and online mentions, for a week from Good Friday (17 April) and used the advertiser value equivalent (AVE) formula - three times rate card, due to the increased value attributed to editorial - to arrive at the £21.25m figure.
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