ITV bundles TV and metaverse innovations within Adlabs
ITV has launched the ITV Adlabs, a new home for all of its branded innovation to sit in as the company continues to diversify its income and offer more to marketers.
ITV also announced an I’m A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! experience in Fortnite with John Lewis & Partners
The scheme was revealed on the evening of November 23 at the ITV Palooza by commercial managing director Kelly Williams and deputy commercial managing director Simon Daglish. It says ITV AdLabs will “bring ITV’s customers closer to the development pipeline” and get them involved in some of the new innovations as they are being tested and trialed.
After boasting record ad revenue rebound following a tough period, the broadcaster is now putting down bets on the future of its ad product. From launch, Adlabs will cover three areas of innovation: digital products, digital partnerships and strategic insight.
In practice, this will meld its numerous creative innovations into bundle products. One such combination could be the dynamic creative advertising afforded by TV buying platform Planet V (which launched new personalization tools recently). It could also be its new ventures into shoppable TV or making the most of its new investments into the metaverse. Twitter was also announced as a new commercial partner.
Daglish promised that the firm will continue to develop initiatives such as contextual targeting based on moods or meal times on ITV Hub using Planet V. It is also expanding its linear addressable proposition on Sky, Virgin and YouView.
Williams said: “We’ve delivered a number of significant innovations this year, but the launch of AdLabs is partly about changing our body language – being better organized, experimenting alongside our customers and embedding them more upstream in the process. AdLabs will further drive our digital transformation and our digital future – the laboratory is open for business.”
It recently launched The Voice into the ‘metaverse’. It also announced an I’m A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! experience in Fortnite with John Lewis & Partners. Watch that here. The campaign has been created by Metavision, the agency and studio bringing entertainment IP and brands to the metaverse.
John Lewis-inspired festive games will feature on the map in sync with the show, along with a branded shop where players can obtain supplies and power up Christmas lights for their virtual camp.
Bhavit Chandrani, director of creative and digital partnerships, ITV, said: “Bringing our IP into the metaverse creates huge opportunities for us across our programming and also allows us to take those shows and our clients into another world where younger audiences live. This is a really exciting step to be both launching I’m A Celebrity in Fortnite and to be partnering with John Lewis to extend such an iconic media campaign into this new world.”