The RTL group has announced its audited results for the year ending December 31, 2012, declaring 44% of revenue is now coming from non-advertising activities.
44% of RTL Group’s revenue originates from a broad range of non-advertising ventures such as content production, rights trading, teleshopping, e-commerce, merchandising.
RTL Group’s online platforms and on-demand offers across Europe collectively generated more than 2.4 billion video views of professionally produced content in 2012; up 25% year-on-year.
Throughout 2012, European TV advertising markets clearly reflected local macro-economic developments: while the German TV advertising market was slightly up, the French, Dutch and Belgian markets were estimated to be down year-on-year, with a significant slowdown over the second half of the year.
Markets in Spain, Hungary and Croatia continued to experience a more pronounced decline.
With regards to digital income, mobile video views increased by 58% to 118 million in Germany and by 119% to 70.5 million in France.
RTL Group’s online network comprises more than 200 websites, reaching an average 61 million unique users a month.
On October 17, 2012, RTL Nederland announced the acquisition of Videostrip, the Netherland’s leading online video advertising network, which generated 1.3 billion video views and delivered 392 million ads in 2012.
FremantleMedia has become the highest-rated TV producer on Youtube, with 101 channels registering 4.5 billion views in 2012.
The YouTube channels for the UK versions of X Factor and Got Talent have generated well over a billion hits around the world.
In addition to its established TV format brands, FremantleMedia launched four YouTube funded channels in 2012. The move is part of the company’s strategy to produce original, quality programming for multiple media platforms
During 2012, the RTL group launched five channels in Europe; RTL Nitro in Germany on April, 1, RTL Telekids in the Netherlands on September 1, RTL II in Hungary on October 1, Big RTL Thrill in India on November 5 and 6ter in France, and DTT HD channel from the company’s French subsidiary Groupe M6.