RTL Group revenue increased by 2.8% to €4,350 million (January to September 2016: €4,230 million), reaching a new record level. This was driven by higher revenue from Mediengruppe RTL Deutschland, Groupe M6 and RTL Group’s rapidly growing digital businesses.
RTL Group’s digital revenue continued to show very dynamic growth, up 30.2% to €560 million (January to September 2016: €430 million). This was mainly driven by organic growth at BroadbandTV and StyleHaul, the sale of American Gods to streaming service Amazon Prime Video and the first-time full consolidation of Smartclip and Divimove.
RTL Group’s revenue is divided as follows: 47.7% from TV advertising, 18.7% from content, 12.9% from digital activities, 5.4% from platform revenue, 4.0% from radio advertising and 11.3% other revenue.
On October 2, 2017, RTL Group closed the transaction to take full ownership of SpotX and acquired the remaining 36.4% shareholding for a total amount of $139.2 million, subject to a cash/debt adjustment, of which $7.7 million have been contributed to SpotX. Following this step, RTL Group pursues an ambitious growth plan for its ad-tech businesses with the main goal to create a global and independent monetisation platform for broadcasters, video-on-demand services and publishers.
To accelerate the execution of this plan, RTL Group has decided to combine SpotX and Smartclip into one integrated ad-tech company by the end of 2018, to roll out the platform across the Group’s operations and to scale it up with further acquisitions and partnerships.
The combined entity will focus on ad-server development, addressable TV, bringing dynamic ad-insertion capabilities in-house and close collaboration with the Group’s minority shareholdings, VideoAmp and Clypd – positioning the company as an innovation leader among independent ad-tech platforms.
“In the third quarter, RTL Group once again demonstrated the healthy state of its core business. As indicated at the end of August, our families of channels in Germany and France continued to outperform their respective TV advertising market significantly. This drove RTL Group’s best ever third quarter revenue and operating profit,” said Joint statement from Guillaume de Posch and Bert Habets, Co-Chief Executive Officers of RTL Group:.
“We act from a position of strength and will keep up this momentum in the fourth quarter, heading for another set of strong full-year results. We continue to invest in exclusive programming to ensure that our channels and on-demand services have the most attractive proposition for both viewers and advertisers.
“As we announced end of August, we are accelerating the execution of our Total Video strategy. This includes an ambitious growth plan for our ad-tech businesses with the main goal to create a global and independent monetisation platform for broadcasters, video-on-demand services and publishers. We are very happy to report that over recent months SpotX and Smartclip have made significant progress in expanding their collaboration. We have now decided to combine both companies into one integrated ad-tech company by the end of 2018. We will roll out the platform across our operations and scale it up with further acquisitions and partnerships.”
