ITV advertising hit by Olympics in third quarter

Net advertising revenue (NAR) at ITV fell in the third quarter, but not as much as the rest of the market, the broadcaster said.

The company took a hit from the Olympics and Paralympics, which were shown on the BBC.

NAR for the 'ITV Family' was down 10% in July, down 9% in August and down 1% in September.

This left the firm with an overall third quarter drop of 6%, which it said was in line with expectations and ahead of its competitors.

This meant that in the first nine months of the year advertising was flat but, again, ahead of the market.

ITV expects NAR to be broadly flat over the full year, with predictions of a 2% drop in the fourth quarter.

This includes ad revenue down 2% in October, down around 2% in November and broadly flat in December

In the nine months to date total external revenues were up 4% to £1.57bn, while non-NAR revenue (including production revenue, sponsorship, online ad revenue, pay TV income) was up 15% at £730m.

ITV Studios continued its strong run, with total revenues up 20% to £498m and the company saying it expects the division to report over £100m of profit in 2012.

Chief Executive Adam Crozier said it had been "an extraordinary year" for UK television with many unique events including the Queen's Jubilee, the London Olympics and the Paralympics.

"In fact 9 out of the top 10 programmes aired will not return next year and as we expected this has affected our viewing performance," he said.

"However, we do not expect our viewing performance in 2012 to impact our advertising share in 2013 and we are focussed on growing our share of viewing next year."