YouView is this weekend launching a £10m advertising campaign starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Gary Barlow.
The Sherlock actor and Take That star will feature alongside Daleks, Dallas’s Larry Hagman and members of the Downton Abbey cast in the video-on-demand service's debut television ads, which break during the X Factor tomorrow.
Created by Adam & Eve, the ads show the celebrities and characters projected onto buildings around the UK and carry the strapline: "Extraordinary TV for everyone."
Media buying has been handled by OMD and the TV ads will be supported by a nationwide newspaper and poster campaign.
YouView's chief executive Richard Halton said: "This is YouView hitting the public airwaves.
"The brand is well-known in the media village but now it is about the public. The scale of the marketing budget is pretty heavy from launch. TV is still the biggest medium for reaching a mass audience, especially for launching a brand no one has really heard of."