ITV has launched an online planning tool aimed at providing agencies and brands with more insight into current TV viewers' behaviours along with their use of new media and technologies and ad preferences.
The tool, called ITV Lives, is based on data from the broadcaster’s biggest ever audience insight project, which it unveiled to coincide with its rebrand last month.
The research comprises four core audience segments: Social lives; Connected lives; Busy lives and Traditional lives, spanning the lifestyle of TV audiences, the brands they engage with, along with their media and technology usage.
The research also explored how each of the groups prefer to engage with advertising, with the findings then mapped against ITV’s internal planning tool and incorporated into the ITV Lives tool.
Agencies and brands can now access the research via the ITV Media website.
The Social Lives group comprises the youngest viewers who are the most sociable, mobile and are always in their connected world. The research has shown they balance their TV viewing between live TV and catch-up.
Meanwhile, the Connected Lives group centres on young adults who balance new technology with new responsibilities. TV is their main form of entertainment, with on-demand services serving as a useful, flexible addition according to the research.
The Busy Lives group centres on what ITV describes as “middle Britain”, consisting of families whose children introduce them to new technologies. The research showed in this group live-event TV shows are a core part of the TV viewing experience.
The final segment, Traditional Lives, forms the biggest group and mainly fall in the older end of the population. Their TV viewing is mostly linear and watched via the main TV set.
The research has also shown viewers have a warmer attitude to content when they are given the opportunitity to engage with it, and all groups use social media albeit in different ways.
Simon Daglish, ITV’s group commercial sales director, said, "We believe it [ITV Lives] will provide agencies and clients with new and interesting ways to analyse audiences. This is a first from ITV Commercial, and something which we hope will be warmly received and be useful to planners and buyers alike on a daily basis.”
ITV Commercial worked with Kantar Media and Work research on the study, which included a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods, and Bounce Digital to build the ITV Lives insight and planning tool.