ITV celebrated a recent award by announcing the streaming service had two billion streams since launch.
- ITVX took four months to reach one billion streams. But it took longer than that to reach two billion, meaning growth using this metric has slowed.
- Although ITV reports existing users are staying longer on ITVX, the lack of growth in the number of streams follows a summer that included the Women’s World Cup and a concerted effort to boost ITVX as a destination for younger viewers.
ITVX won the best on-demand service award at this year’s Edinburgh TV Festival. Within hours, ITV was celebrating the win, announcing that the service had now reached 2 billion streams. What at first glance seemed a major milestone may not be all that it seems.
ITVX officially launched on 8th December 2022, although the app already began rolling out across devices before then. At that point ITV began counting the number of streaming requests ITVX was receiving.
Four months and a day later, on 9th April – Easter Sunday – the first milestone of one billion streams was reached.
But ITV only confirmed in a now deleted press release that ITVX had reached two billion streams last week (week ending 25th August), meaning it took four and a half months to go from one to two billion streams. Growth using the number of streams metric has stalled. Realistically, ITVX will need to record at least three billion streams around first anniversary on 8th December to maintain the current flat trend.
ITVX Summer Success Stories
Contributing to ITVX’s popularly over the summer: Love Island with 335 million views. The FIFA Women’s World Cup added 15 million streams. The Tour De France enjoyed a 34% streaming increase year-on-year, with 5 million views.
But despite these sucesses and a big push to get more younger viewers to stream ITVX ahead of the closure of the CITV channel, ITVX streaming requests fell short of the surge experienced at the beginning of 2023.
The return of Big Brother in the autumn will be key to how ITVX’s overall figures look like by the end of the year.
If ITV announces three billion streams before 8th December, then the number of streaming requests to the service is growing. If the announcement comes later or if ITV chooses not to mention this metric, then it indicates ITVX is failing to build on its early launch success. However, ITV will then need to look at alternative metrics to measure success, such as how many have converted to ITVX Premium and how long existing users remain on the platform.
- Since publishing this article, ITV has re-uploaded its press release here.
Marc Thornham
updated 23:01